


Antigen (Ascension)

by Outside_Context_Problem



Series: The Troll War [7]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Conspiracies that are kind of comedic, God-Tier, Grimdark, Multi, Sci-fi with anti-gods and cosmic struggles without coming off as too much "BSG 4th season" hopefully
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-07-27
Packaged: 2017-11-03 11:07:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Outside_Context_Problem/pseuds/Outside_Context_Problem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The indescribable energies from the home dimension of unknowable beings of nonlinear existence.</p><p>An intrusion from the last reality that applies an impossibly subjective measurement to your life.</p><p>Methods for achieving godhood(ies) have come a long way since getting shot with a poisoned arrow and rising to Mount Olympus on the smoke of your funeral pyre.</p><p>Now with bonus method, being shunted into a liminal state between realities by the unholy spawn of an octopus, an albino, and a moebius strip!</p><p>Features two demons, one spirography sphere dealy, sixteen gods, and now, an actual ending!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (A)Wake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Certain parts came before, which is to say they occurred at the same time in different realities.

**Now.**   
i'm just not sure if i'm really, REALLY ready for this kind of power! or the right person for it.  
who the fuck is ever the right person  
moot point  
john the stormbringer  
egbert of the winds  
youre the one that has the power  
youre the one that deals with it  
Not the r8ght person???????? John you alr8dy flipped me red, stop 8eing so pitia8le. Do you think it was luck that we got this power? Well I HAVE ALL THE LUCK. ALL OF IT. Stop moping and kick ass alr8dy!!!!!!!!  
you heard your crazy murder girlfriend we need a plan john  
we need to figure out how to kill a god!!

**Before.**  
Time is space here and  you can unfold that even if it turns out to unfold into a tesseract. You're not the only expert here, after all.

For that matter, you're not really an expert compared to her. Aradia sees time in a way you don't think you ever will. Complexity simplifies for you, but it expands for her, revealing every layer below.

You don't really mind. You grew up in a gene-family and life-family of doctors and professors, biologists and astrophysicists and sociologists. You and your Bro were the practical ones. The hands and tools of the family body. It's relaxing, really. That's how you're so damn cool, really. You don't have to overthink things.

Especially when it comes to time. Because you don't have to analyze it in order to know it. Dirk taught you from a lot of traditions, but what they had in common - Zen Buddhism, Taoism, the Transcendent Order, Action-Response Mesoam Neo-Zapatist Combat - was shrinking the conscious to enable the subconscious. He taught you to always process without actively looking, to act with purpose and to know your reasoning by your actions. He ~~made you Batman~~ made you the best damn hands your family could have. You think your skin is proof enough of that. You took on eternal anti-gods and won their favor.

And Aradia? Ara is a mind without compare, a magician of time. You've seen her in action, and she's no mere channel for the dead. She gets their knowledge with patience and politeness and unending energy for questions. And then she uses it the way she wants to. She just applies the same principles to time itself.

You could watch her do this forever. In fact you probably have/will/will have been. You rarely interfere, but when you do it's like sliding in a missing puzzle piece - a simple and intuitive step, that jumps Aradia's work ahead. She gives you a warm grin each time you do that, and you feel absurdly _useful_. Your brother went to mad dedicated lengths to teach you skills you could apply to a lot of fields, and you finally found the one where you and your talents are really needed.

It just kind of fits that time is your inheritance.

Aradia makes one last adjustment, and the indecipherable mess of time and space snaps out into an n-dimensional fractal construct, one whose order is so complex as to approach its previous chaos from the other direction.

Aradia understands it, though, and grabs hold of one strand. "Are you ready, Dave?"

"Time is meaningless here until we shove it into being. We're here at the same point as the first time we came." You smirk and adjust your lenses. "Right now I'm out there being born ready."

(One of the few good things about not hanging out with John is that you can make ironically terrible one-liners without him insisting that you meant them sincerely.)

By the look of skeptical humor on Aradia's face, she doesn't quite buy your ironic appreciation either. At least she's not calling you out on it.

You wonder exactly what your gene-sister would have to say about your mental health if she knew you were going off to confront the immortal ruler of the Alternian Empire with nothing but a flight suit, your psychic girlfriend, and an intuitive but simple ability to manipulate time itself.

 _Probably something long-winded about the amount of power you could be applying to the battlefield or letting her study instead of using it on an insane crusade_. Yeah, you're not going to bother imagining any more of that. The overactive imagination is more of John's bag anyway. Your strengths tend more towards pulchritude.

Later you'll regret not letting Rose run any kind of test she wanted on you for as long as she wanted. It would have beat the eternity and a half you spent fighting that cueball-headed mother _fucker_. And even if you didn't learn a damn thing from it, you really could've lived perfectly happily without the shit you know now.

## PRELUDE


	2. (Un)Puase

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the record? okay. i'm john egbert, and i think i'm somewhere on the path towards becoming a god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, that precious time in any young Homestuck fic's life when even your sci-fi alternate universe has to try and second-guess the Huss. So from here on out, god tier, Skaia, and whatever else isn't really laid down in the comic shall be _fully_ subject to my own horrific interpretations.
> 
>  
> 
> Oh, and no I'm not just going to infodump and leave. What Dave knows and how he knows it will be explained later. Nonlinear storytelling: too cool for you, DAD?? (No seriously I am just a sadistic writer who derives glee from hinting at revelations and then making people wait a few more chapters. So you can see why I write Homestuck fanfic.)

           

## 1: John

 **Anchored**  
You've really been trying to enjoy this respite. It's hard when you don't know when it's going to end or what the next escalation is going to be.

On the plus side, you have two moirails, your matesprit/kismesis, your gene-sibling, and the universe's angriest mutant all ready to slap you until you stop being morose and relax. Also Tavros, although he tries to argue you out of it and then he has to be slapped too, because you are entirely too good at rhetoric and starting dragging him down too.

Okay, Things To Be Grateful For:  
1\. Every single one of the aforementioned people. There isn't a one of them that hasn't made your life better in at least one aspect.  
2\. That your promotion to Fleet Captain allowed you to requisition a monster-sized troop transport for your leave, so that you don't have to have everyone in the same space _any longer than you have to_. You learned your lesson already. Jesus.

You're checking fleet status reports - full data entries with your Stelcom clearance level, which means you get all the cynicism, fleet politicking, and swearing left out of the regularly distributed versions.  
 **Human Coalition**  
13 of the original 18 colonies remain inhabited. 7 of 22 new colonies have been detected by the Alternian Empire. Total human population estimated 18.6 billion.  
Detail, Newhome: The troll fleet that attacked Newhome sent no transmissions back and was on a wide-range scouting mission (source: Empire fleet commander interrogation, Captain John Egbert presiding). Colony status: Secure (tentative). **[Select to view information on colonial expansion and Exile Contingency plans]**.  
Fleet, Functional Dersetech vessels: 114 destroyers, 38 battlecruisers, 12 battleships, 19 special operations vessels. **[Select to view information on repairs, salvage, and construction]**  
HCI: 15 operatives active within the Empire. 3 operatives have been detected and killed. 4 operatives have not reported within 72 hours of schedule and may be compromised. **[Select to view intelligence reports]**

 **Free Alternia**  
6 of 11 liberated troll worlds have been destroyed. The Veil remains secure. Estimated free troll population: 1.7 billion.  
Fleet, Functional Dersetech Vessels: 19 battleships, 6 psychic operations vessels. **[Select to view information about the Free Alternian Lend-Lease Agreement and attached Earthfleet forces]**

 **The Alternian Empire**  
68 of 97 original colonies remain under uncontested Imperial control. **[Select to view-**

The display pad clatters to the floor, and you blush and try not to look guilty. "Everyone was busy and I thought I'd just take a minute to-"

"No! John, you are _on leave_ and if you ignore me for more war reports _I will end you, puny human_." Earthfleet's third troll officer has her hands on her hips, but you're well aware they could go to her temples at any minute, and she knows _exactly_ how annoyed you get when your subcutaneous symbiotic armor is rattling with a psychic attack.

You throw up your hands in surrender, and then pull Vriska onto your lap. "Okay. You win. Where is everyone?"

"How should I know?" she retorts, arms crossed.

"Uhm… maybe because you like to keep an eye on all your metaphorical irons in the fire, and you have enough eyes to do it. Oh and I know you hacked the internal security so you could corner Tavros last night. How'd that go?" You are, of course, only asking to score points in the verbal battle. You're the one who patched her split lip when she came back to bed, after all.

"Fiiiiiiiine. Your perverse pair is at nav trying to find an interesting place to go in this system. Nepeta's convinced that at least one of your cryptofauna has to exist, and she wants to hunt the Bigfoot of Io. Karkat, Jade, and _Tavros_ are drinking in the lounge."

"So… vids?" You meet the eight-pupil glare with your dorkiest, most honest grin.

Vriska tosses her hair and gives you a recalcitrant "Alriiiiiiiight. But this one had better be less of a pile of crap than the last one. "What does God need with a starship?" Obviously god has to travel in style!!!!!!!!"

"Yeah… sure, Vris, _that's_ what was wrong with V. VI is better, though. Not as amazing as IV was, but still good."

"Your species and your whale fetish."

"We felt guilty! It was a big thing during the nuclear age. Nevermind, I know you don't care about my giant nerd speeches."

She musses your hair with one hand. "I like your passion, John. It just needs a better subject."

"Like, say, you."

"Like, say, me," she says, completely sincere and oh god cunning fanged grin. You turn on the vidplayer maybe a little hastily.

However good Takei's performance is, or Dorn's cameo, or Shakespeare in the original Klingon, you don't get a chance to refresh yourself on it.

You get a bit too distracted most of the way through the vid.

 

There are three trolls on the Earthfleet side of the alliance rather than the Free Alternia side. One is here because he joined up before there _was_ a Free Alternia, and when you hit Captain you threw your weight around to get him a standard commission (it let the Coalition Alternian Cooperative Department close its largely irrelevant doors, which helped). The second joined Earthfleet because her moirail was here (and her matesprit is in deep cover raising rebellions so much she wouldn't see him any more if she was Free Alternia). The third joined the Fleet because, well, to quote Free Alternia's first elected leader, "LIKE FUCK ARE WE GONNA TAKE HER."

You alternate sleeping arrangements. Karkat and Nepeta, you and Vriska, and apparently Jade and Tavros sometimes - but then, you also like sleeping with your moirails (an activity somewhat less euphemistic and more about actual sleep), a pile of people on a giant bed that Jade has added herself to, having decided siblinghood and moirallegiance are entirely compatible. It's a mess of tangled social connections, a balancing act of sympathies, dedications, and passions. You love it. It's just making sure everyone understands how much you appreciate them and value their tie to you: the best part of being a friendleader (colloquially, palhoncho).

So you spend a lot of your Sol System Grand Tour just plain old hanging out.

And now and again, when you're in the lounge getting clobbered at chess by Karkat, or looking over Mars's terraformed marshlands with Nepeta and Equius, or helping keep Vriska and Tavros's burgeoning friendship from imploding, you use your implants to secretly check a file buried deep within the Fleet's massive computing network, hiding encrypted in the comments section of an innocuous piece of data processing code.  
[Encrypted: {Encryption Protocol Name Encrypted}]  
hi rose. i'd like it if you could take a look at everything here. the biological monster data is interesting, but the real prize is the demon. because he seems very familiar from your first liminal transition experiment logs.  
and as a personal favor i want you to look at whatever you can salvage from my biometric readings. talk to dirk for technical data recovery if you need to. nobody outside the family.  
i'm pretty sure i died and came back rose.  
i need to know why.  
There has yet to be a response, but the comments have been accessed once.

 

 **Unlinked. Relinking.**  
The messenger of your return to battle isn't who you expected. You're on the command deck, interfaced with the sensor-receiver arrays. You feel the impact of charged particles streaming off Sol. It feels like a strong, warm wind. And you can shape it like any other. Dave taps you on the shoulder.

"Hey, Dave. Sorry, I'm a bit distracted at the moment. You need me right now? You might want to go hang out at the lounge otherwise, Karkat is mocking old sci-fi low-budget vids."

"John. Think for a minute about why I'm here."

"Uh? Dave, you've been here with Aradia and Gamzee for three days now. We did a Fight Club last night and Tavros smacked you in the head with his horns on purpose for once. Gamz laughed his ass off."

"Uhuh. And before that? How'd we get here? And where do you know the clown from?"

"You… uh… wait, what the _fuck_? Dave what the hell?!"

Dave sinks into the chair next to you. "My skin ain't just a dye job, Egbert. I sat in the unreality of the Furthest Ring for an infinity of an instant, and it unlocked what I had in myself. Time. Time's my fucking safety blanket, my bodyguard. It rewinds and puts me somewhere else when I'm fucked up. And I've just done that for about a week and a half, constantly, from my viewpoint, while in a fight that would have been happening right now. Fucking cueball. We were deadlocked and needed an out, so I made it happen instead of letting it protect me. That bounced us back here. With a couple stops first, which is why I have a lovesick puppy murderclown dogging my heels."

"Okay… I think I'm following. What about present Dave?"

"I am present Dave. I didn't time-travel, I rewrote history. Instead of assaulting the Green Moon of Alternia after the Condesce revealed she already had Dersetech and drove us off her ship, history now says we were here. I have the memories of hanging out with you guys, but I don't feel it like I feel fighting Aradia's evil clone until the Empire's sugar daddy showed up."

"Sorry, what?"

"I don't want to try and explain it right now." He curses, which is how you know he's remembered you're John Egbert and you live for long speeches. "Short story: our tentacled reality-fucking friends aren't no-strings gift-granting saints, they're responsible for us and the trolls existing in the same universe, and they have one annoying fucker of an enemy who's been corrupting them into the Empire retroactively through history. Oh, and I think he's outside of time or some shit so he'll know what would have happened."

"… okay. Sure. Dave?"

"Yeah, John?"

"I'm really glad you're apparently some kind of grimdark time god and not me."

"As opposed to being a non-grimdark wind god."

"Wha?"

"John." Dave points at the main display, twists his hand to control it, expanding it to the solar system and incorporating data from recording stations. The solar wind is improbably, impossibly, with no outside force acting on it, curving around Mercury and Mars in its normal path, then pincering around your ship.

"Whoa. Okay, maybe I - Dave how the fuck do you know this shit!!"

"You don't feel it?" He puts his hand on your shoulder and it tingles, something halfway between irritation and ecstacy. You see Dave - and you see shadowy echoes extending around him, multiple unhappened presents and pasts.

"I… shit, I guess I do. But I know that… sorry, I'm really not used to talking about this! It was so weird we just… didn't talk about it afterward."

"We?"

"Oh. Right. If we're going to discuss this, you should ask Aradia to bring Vriska up here." You wince, remembering the things you've heard about their childhood problems - and then blink and remember a night when you were sleeping in the family/moirallegiance pile, and in the morning Aradia had a black eye, and Vriska was covered in scratches and bruises. You also remember Vriska being bored as shit and playing foosball with Tavros that entire night instead, but the new memory feels a bit more real. "Oh. Um also your time powers might have made our matesprits into each others kismeses."

His face screws up for a second while he sorts through memory. "Egbert you have the worst taste in relationships. Worse than your taste in vids."

"I know, I dated you." BAM. Dave walks into one! You wonder if he'll rewrite time to avoid your SICK BURNS.

Yeah okay no, Dave just gives you Dave Eyes. "Flip all you want but I'm solidly positive with Aradia. Don't let your spider fuck up my relationship."

"Okay, Dave! I'll slot that in between figuring out how I can manipulate solar winds and preparing to fight this bald guy you really hate."

"No, he's a literal cueball-head, Egbert. A freaky-ass grotesque-proportioned puppet-like artificial being with a blank white sphere for a head. But fuck, you're right. Whatever the hell me and Ara are now, you - and I guess whatshername - are the same thing. And we may be the only ones who can shut him down."

[Encrypted transmission: {You Won't Believe This Shit} Encryption Level]  
Hello, John. I think I may have found the beginnings of your answers.  
Could you identify yourself and your concern for my personal records and context?  
for the record? okay. i'm john egbert, and i think i'm somewhere on the path towards becoming a god.  
oh! and dave wants me to say we have to kill a guy who's already become one.


	3. Be(tween)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you don't have a plan, how do you know when to throw it aside?

**Communion.**   
Is this a sufficiently secure environment for discussion, Dave?  
its exactly as freaky as i expect from you sis  
nothing else but green green and green here huh?  
just a demon.  
Just a demon.  
do i even want to fucking know  
it's probably not relevant.  
John 8eat the shiiiiiiiit out of him!!!!!!!!  
And that was regular John. Regular cy8org 8iosym8iote 8adass John anyw8y!  
we're fine! time has meaning here, it's just angled a little off our time. i can't see any problems in our future!  
okay people quiet down. rose.  
what have you found out?  
The Noble Circle of Horrorterrors has been less than forthcoming with this information.  
rose! "family only" security does not include the alien monstrosities that are kind of cool and also terrifying and most definitely have their own plans and priorities!  
No direct questions were asked and you were not remotely associated, John. I am well aware of how to subtly acquire information without letting on what I am seeking. If I wasn't, I would not be in Human Coalition Intelligence.  
whoa what  
youre in intelligence  
since fucking when?  
Precisely. What I have determined, John, is that you were exposed to an element that existed before the Horrorterrors.  
but relative to us, the horrorterrors have always existed!  
Exactly. These elements in fact predate not only our entire reality, but all possible realities.  
Where the fuck does that leave????????  
I'm not in the slightest bit sure. Fascinating, isn't it?  
that is a word you could use, yes, rose. other people might say terrifying.  
The Horrorterrors also obliquely let slip that another similar element was involved in our own birth. Both groups of us, test-tube children and grubs alike.  
this is what we mean when we say youre fucking spooky rose btw  
how does that work???????? none of the rest of you have shown any kind of freakiness, just… oh. just the double exposures, right?  
Yes. The exposure Dave and Aradia had is less evident. However, given the far more obvious manifestations of Dave's transformation, I would imagine some part of his sojourn into or out of the Furthest Ring included exposure to this antediluvian element.  
rose. no.  
I beg your pardon?  
you are not beginning experiments with this by exposing yourself to the furthest ring unshielded!  
John, my work with the Furthest Ring has been strictly scientific and professional.  
yes, and you know very well that you as the experiment and jade as the control is not a large enough sample size! it is completely statistically invalid!  
You have a point, John.  
and i am including a ban on recruiting karkat, tavros, equius, and nepeta to increase the data set! if and only if you can get all four of us and everyone in that mother grub's spawning can you mess around with this!  
also i would prefer if we saved the experimenting until we have destroyed the godlike entity creating this war.  
or had our asses royally beaten and come crawling back  
You invited me to examine the matter, John, I will respect your boundaries. But I do have something you can act upon.  
i knew you would, rose. what's the data?  
There is another rogue planet orbiting the galactic core precisely opposite the Battleground. It also has remained untouched by the Horrorterrors or their enemy. There are other elements on this planet.  
Oh hell yesssssssss! TREASURE HUNT!!!!!!!!  
dude your matesprit is nuts but she has some fantastic ideas  
lets get adventuring  
oh we will. i just want to do one thing first.  
a family reunion!  
our last generation owes us a couple answers.

 

 **Linear Now.**  
Your in-person debate continues for a little while longer, but you're John Egbert. When it comes to a pesuade-off you cannot hope to best you. You are simply the best there is. You start off with two against and one abstaining, and work around until everyone is unanimous with you that you need to share what you know with the rest of your family/cohort.

They take it pretty well. Except Karkat, obviously. Actually he does take it well, it's just that his calm and outrage are both the same volume. Jade gets analytical, Karkat starts worrying at his old mutant concerns, Tavros starts kind of poking at his wings, trying to look them over, a process that resembles a dog chasing his tail entirely too much, until Vriska makes him stand still by grabbing his horns.

You grab Equius and Nepeta by the shoulders. "Pile time?"

"Pile time!" Nepeta agrees. Your deadlier moirail's mouth is screwed up in a half-snarl, upper lip puckered by the three pale scars across her face from the Battlefield Demon's claws. Yeah, time to get things out and calmed before she goes berserker mode. And you used to think Eq was the one with anger management problems.

"Shit, I better talk to Gamzee," Karkat mutters. "Wait. What??"

"Dave rewrote history and picked up your murderclown buddy by mistake."

"Okay, sur- what the FUCK? STRIDER!"

You prove yourself a coward who would abandon a dying man, and leave Dave to his fate.

 

The hammock works for this. You've managed to get it included as a pile by association. It's also a lot more comfortable. "Okay, I know this all sounds freaky-" you start. You are interrupted by a flurry of fists to your legs and holy fuck OW. You maintain the presence of mind ~~pain pain PAIN PAIN pain~~ to be thankful she doesn't have her claws out, and that your fibulas are bioengineered composites that aren't going to shatter.

"You didn't tell me!" Nepeta snarls and grabs your knees, pulling herself over you and putting her fangs level with your eyes.

"I am also dismayed that you didn't feel able to trust us," Equius rumbles thunderously.

"Aw, guys! I didn't want to say anything until I knew what I was talking about."

They both stare blankly at you. You open your mouth again, then shut it. "I'm an incredible idiot, aren't I?" you mumble into your hands.

Massive biceps slip under your arms and wrap around your chest. "One stupid act doesn't make you a stupid person. No more than one heroic act makes you a hero. How you behave in summation is how your character is defined." Equius rumbles, and the vibration deep in his chest, pressed against your back, drives out doubt and shame, replaces those parts of your mind with your bond. Nepeta growls in a higher pitch of the same pulse, leaning her head back on your knees.

You feel them. _Feel_ them like you haven't before, the vibrations of the air coming from them, the deep exchange of molecules, the living, breathing force within them.

What worries you is that you feel them in the context of strands upon your palm, of necks you could strangle the breath from with but a moment's grip.

You decide to tell them this. Maybe the thrumming is relaxing you a bit too much because _holy shit you are telling your best friends how your freaky power is showing you how easy it would be to murder them._

They… sometimes you forget the cultural context of your moirails.

"Your gifts seem destructive in nature," Equius says with an approving nod.

"That's good, you're best leading the hunt!" Nepeta adds.

You consider asking if they're serious, if they're not worried about you choosing the right targets, if they're sane to still want to be this close to you. You entertain those thoughts for less than five seconds. They know. They're still here like nobody else would be (well. Your family would. But Rose would assess you, Jade would be worried about how you're handling the stress, and Dave would make wisecracks. None of them would just _be here_ ). You consider just breaking down for a few more seconds. But that's really not the point of your moirallegiance either. You sit in silence, enveloped in Equius and acting as Nepeta's cushion. And if it weren't just a figure of speech, your brain would be overheating with the plans running through it right now.

Because you are Fleet Captain John Egbert, and you will sacrifice your people if you have to for the hope of peace, even your friends and family. But like hell will you leave them behind when they want to fight alongside you, even if they might be out of their weight class. You don't make those decisions for them. And you already know what they've decided, because it's making your organic-polymer bones rumble. And now you will move heaven and earth to keep them by your side.

 

And so a week later, for your sins and fears, and for your security clearance, your harsh and demanding leader (you) sends you into a sealed Stelcom meeting on Huss Station to explain the new deal to the unelected military leaders of the entire Coalition and Free Alternia, including your genetic grandparents.

The Supreme Commander has yielded the podium to you, and you've begun to speak before anyone thinks this is unusual, and by then you have the momentum. You remove the microphone first thing. There are seven remaining out-system colonial admirals on the board, as well as the two Grand Leadespoilers, attending via ansible transmissions. The five colonial admirals and ten Terran admirals from Sol are attending in person, and Director English is transmitting from somewhere in-system known only to him.

You reach out to every one of them and put your words on their ears simultaneously, in English, Mandarin, Arabic, French, Bantu, and Alternian, even across the light-years that separate you from many of them. You have been practicing with the vibrations of your breath.

"Admirals. You all know me and what I have accomplished. You know I'm no fool. And you know we cannot sustain this war - that we can win it, but pyrrhic victory will be the _best_ we can achieve. A tenth of humanity is dead. One in eight Alternians is dead. Ten habitable worlds, settled for decades and centuries, are ruined pits at best, shattered planetoids at worst. I know this is the conclusion you would reach, because we rewrote time after you reached it."

You allow a pause, allow them to register Dave in his obsidian-skinned, time-ravaging capacity behind you, allow them to try and reconcile two sets of memories now that their realities have been put in question. You don't allow questions, because the John Egbert express is still coming through. "We need a decisive victory to end this war. You would have been discussing how to achieve that."

You rise. The air whips around you in its sharp funnel, but it does not so much as ruffle the creases of your uniform. You stand in the center of a storm that lifts you off the ground, but do not have to raise your voice to be heard. "We have your answer."

"Six days ago the solar wind curved around Venus and overcharged the Roentgen Array's turbine generators. That was me. Five days ago in Ceres war games the battleship _Von Clauswitz_ fired an entire barrage of missiles that misfired, and a low-intensity field from the destroyer _Cáo Cāo_ breached a microscopic hull fracture on the battleship, causing a power shutdown with odds of 90,000:1 against. That was Captain Serket. Four days ago an Alternian fleet took eight hours to transition to realspace, letting Third Fleet crush them before they could transmit that we have colonized Ubezhishche. That was Agent Megido. Tomorrow I will have killed Agent Strider. Instead history is rewritten and we are here. That's his work."

You fly out from the podium, drifting into the center of the Stellar Command chambers. Time to sell it. "The Empire has not discovered Dersetech. The Condesce has only unleashed what she's had for a long time. The Alternian Empire has its own technologically superior powering and manipulating it. You have us."

You drift down, and with a wave of your hand open the chamber doors. The awesome dramatic exit would be less impressive if anyone in here knew you just had Dave hack the door locks and pop them when you waved, but hey. Showmanship is the main part of magic, illusions - and pranks.

This is gonna be a big one.

**Nonlinearity.**   
Second time 8r8king into the demon's lair and still nothing? 8ooooooooring.  
we're gonna be pretty busy anyway vriska. there's a lot to plan. you guys want to give me a list?  
gamzee makara  
addicted and homicidal  
SOLLUX CAPTOR, MISSING AND PROBABLY MADE INTO A FUCKING ENGINE BY THOSE SICK PIECES OF- SORRY. SORRY. I HAVE IT UNDER CONTROL NOW  
:33 < Eridan Ampurra. Ampora. Jerkass. Total jerkass!  
feferi peixes, heir to the throne and hidden somewhere safe that even i can't see yet!  
Terezi Pyrope. 8lack 8acksta88er!  
IT'S NOT MY FAULT YOU CAN'T KEEP A KISMESIS TO SAVE-  
not my fault you can't keep a kismesis to save-  
terezi pyrope. i'm going to put down "causes kismessitude rivalry" and "technically wants to murder us all even more than my girlfriend".  
You suck!!!!!!!!  
stop being so pitiable and we can get right back to stabbing each other. <3.  
Five, then. Twelve trolls, four humans.  
and one cueball sunk corner pocket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huss Station is of course named after the most important bearer of that moniker - Jan Hus/John Huss, the 14th century Czech philosopher and priest who inspired years of rebellion that had a major effect on Martin Luther a century later.
> 
> For reasons known only in obscure or destroyed databases, a group with the same name as his followers, the Hussites, became incredibly influential in 21st century global culture, being fanatical devotees of the 10-movie epic saga _And It Don't Stop_.


	4. ((Pre-)Post-)Process

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You came to the realization that you were going to have to be the one to act very slowly, but you've built up entirely too much inertia to be stopped now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god writing pesterlogs/memos/broadcasts/whatever is so fun and easy. Can't stop.

**Home [Low Earth Orbit]**

You sigh when you see the protocol pop up, remind yourself that it's probably necessary, and he's just being a Strider.

John Egbert has joined broadcast  our family is batshit insane: a tutorial  
DS: no because he's my bro  
KV: BUT YOU HAVE THE SAME AMOUNT OF GENETIC MATERIAL FROM HIM AND LALONDE 1, AND LALONDE 2 CALLS HER MOTHER.  
DS: roses hangups dont actually affect me  
DS: genetically speaking im also vaguely related to john and jade and to certain species of bat and the pistol shrimp  
JH: but mostly mellivora capensis!!! >:D  
KV: GET MEDICATED, HARLEY. STRIDER, YOU HAVE THE SAME GENETIC RELATION AS LALONDE 1 AND LALONDE 2, AND THEY WERE BOTH YOUR LUSUS-CARETAKER-WHATEVER, NO FUCKS WERE GIVEN. HOW IS DIRK NOT YOUR MOTHER?  
KM: The Male Is Called The Father Karkat  
KV: I AM ENTIRE GALACTIC ROTATIONS BEYOND CARING, KANAYA, I JUST WANT TO DEAL WITH THIS ONE FUCKED UP BUNCH OF APES WITHOUT HAVING TO LEARN EVERYTHING ABOUT THE PROCESS OF CREATING THE NEXT GENERATION ADULT HUMAN KNOW-IT-ALL DIPSHITS FROM SQUALLING PINK GRUBLINGS.  
DS: look dumpass  
DS: there is a way being a dad works  
DS: and there is a way being a bro works  
DS: and he is totally a bro  
TN: Okay… But can I ask another question? How does Jade's double… Grandfather thing work? That's not how you said… Human biology worked.  
JH: jeez!!! it's like you guys weren't listening to the genetic experiment description at all!!! okay i'm a mix of grandpop and admiral crocker only with the normal added mix we all have, then i was double-stirred like i'd had two generations of genetic drift  
JH: >:P aduh  
DS: one of which was an incredibly incestuous writhing hedonistic abominable imaginary generation.  
JH: shut the fuck up dave!!! so no tavros i really only have one genetic grandpop, since grandpop harley is a clone of grandpop english, but the genetic material used to make me came from both of them even though it's totally identical, and admiral crocker too  
JH: and john and his nanna are the same way! except um…  
JH: john where the hell does your dad fit in anyway???  
JE: well he's right across the table, for starters.

Fortunately the elders of the family aren't really expecting too much from your side in the way of conversation just yet. Equius's leave pass got held up in the foe not even a Stelcom admiral can fully beat: bureaucracy, Gamzee's medication has him zoned out enough to just be lying on the deck staring at the clouds, and Vriska _still_ hasn't shown up or left you anything vaguely resembling a message. Not that you really expected her to.

So, in lieu of having to repeat things, a near-universal hatred in your gene-family, Nanna and Director English are reviewing reports, Dr. Harley (senior) is discussing power fluctuations in suborbital engines with Rose, and Aradia is getting along disturbingly well with the robotic black sheep of the family. You guess there is something she is just cool with about AR, who is more or less robot Dave? And of course Nepeta is talking avidly but quietly with Dirk.

Goddamit. You know it's not gonna be good when someone that obsessed with relationships, real and theoretical, gets to talking with your moirail.

You would be entirely willing to testify to the Coalition Parliament that while you have your doubts that the HTA is _really_ nothing more than a nerdy excuse for a social club, Dirk Strider is most definitely not a kingmaker. He's a goddamn matchmaker. (And matchbreaker. You have gained the ability to immediately recognize a soon-to-be-ex of Dave's who's had a talk with Dirk. "Haunted" doesn't quite suffice as a descriptor. More of "soulless".)

You don't know _why_ he seems so obsessed with matters of the ~~heart~~ oxytocin-secreting glands. Dude's a sweet-ass bio-augment athlete (Silver Medal, Kendo, 2386 Olympics) and an absurdly good AI programmer (your side of the family built Robo's current body, but Dirk had him as a metaprogram in his HUD for years before that). You guess everyone has to have a hobby? Lalondes do psychology-via-passive-aggressive-intimidation, English-Harleys carry way too many guns and are way too good with them, Crocker-Egberts bake, and Striders… are just fucking weird.

God, you love your family.

"You're pretty goddamn content for the guy who called this meeting with the stated purpose of raising hell," Dave says out of the side of his mouth, leaning his chair back momentarily to get closer to your head at the end of your near-horizontal sprawl across chair and tabletop.

"I dunno about that, Dave. If you see it like that, sure." You smile. It's a relaxed, easy smile, but that doesn't mean anything. "The way I see it, I'm riding the low pressure front and waiting to meet the high pressure."

"Dude, you already introduced the lord of the bro-puns to the cat-sounds girl, don't fucking start constantly using wind metaphors unless you _want_ to make my life a living hell." Dave's face is flat. He doesn't really care that much about whether your silly speeches are about ancient sci-fi flicks, or the long-term survival of the human species, or how you can't stop thinking in terms of winds and breaths (oxygen exchanges and pressure differentials, drag and lift and choking and asphyxiation), you know that, it's just that ironically giving a shit is the new ironically not giving a shit.

"You'll have plenty of time to get used to it." Aradia winks at you from the other side of Dave, and he pulls off the coveted double facepalm combo. You high-five over him.

Then you lean forward. "Okay. I'm going to interrogate every single one of my caretakers and authority figures if I have to, as much as I love you guys, so let's start with something light. How much of our entire species's government do you - as a collective, including your faux-Masonic pet project - control right now?"

There's a sudden quiet of audible communication (and you're sure, a sudden spike of electronic communication), an exchanging of glances, and-

"All of it."

AR shrugs off the glares of the combined elder generations. "It's _John_. If you really want to commit to the charade that you can deceive him, go ahead, but - hold on, my absurdly fast artificial intelligence suggests that he's not going to fall for it!"

Dirk opens his mouth because the two of them kind of have this binary-contrary thing going on, but Dave leans forward and slams his chair legs down. "Bro, seriously."

"There's no need to dissemble," decides the second-least-expected commentator. Dad. "Right now we have the power to get done what needs doing." He takes a draw from his pipe, and the wafting smoke perks up Dave's murderclown boyfriend/ex/it's complicated enough to lift his head off the floor. Well, Rose's Mom (you can call her Roxy, but not when she's in the same room as your Dad. It just. Doesn't work.) is the one monitoring his neurochemicals, she can decide whether tetrahydrocannabinol is a useful treatment or not. "We have to prioritize, though. Can't do everything because we haven't seized power, son. We're just very influential. Like you are."

You have to admit that hit home. "Yeah. I'd noticed that." You take a deep breath (but not a Deep Breath. You know - like you know where your arm is and how to move it - that you could suck the air from the lungs of everyone on this glider if you tried. The war is not the only thing freaking you out these days. John Egbert: the guy who's not only pervy enough to have a moirallegiance triumvirate, he's also fucked-up enough to need one), and continue. "I need some of that."

Eyes flicker, more electronic chatter (which you could intercept, the wavelengths are traveling through the air, but the windy thing doesn't turn you into a neutrino burst receptor, or a cryptographer), and everyone waits for Nanna or Director English to say something. And the first person to respond is-

Dad, again? "Let's hear it plainly, son. We're proud of you, and we want to help."

Okay, you could handle yelling or discomfort but you really can't take him being so supportive right now.

KV: THE FUCK IS UP WITH JOHN'S BROOD-LUSUS? I THOUGHT HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A SCIENTIST, NOT THE FUCKING LEADER OF THIS GERIATRIC CONSPIRACY.  
DS: dude are you calling bro old  
AR: Come on lil bro. For real dude is a mummy all well preserved but last eon.  
DS: robo-bro give it a fucking rest you're a goddamn desktop computer by the same standards  
AR: That hurt, dave. Thats going to be reflected in your christmas presents.

Children learn from their parents, bros learn from each other. Although AR might have half-adopted Dave's dont give a fuck approach to communication formatting just to piss Dirk off. Those two are… well, if Rose ever decided to release her family files, there's her best-seller right there. _Self-Hatred and Narcissism in AI Personality Duplicates_.

JE: dad is being weird that's all. he catches me off-guard sometimes.  
RL: Your own expectations of your father catch you, John. Everyone is partially blinded to each other, and when those aspects they are not familiar with are displayed, preconceptions force surprise.  
JE: that would mean a lot more if you didn't refuse to accept not every single interaction you have with your mom is a battle in a passive-aggressive war, rose.  
KM: He Has A Point Rose  
KM: I Haven't Seen Anything To Indicate Hostility From Your Mother  
KM: And Before You Defensively Blurt Anything About Alternian Standards Of Hostility  
KM: Remember You Yourself Have Encouraged Me To Become An Observer Of Human Nature  
DS: ouch  
AR: Curse of the family lil sis. All those big brains come back to bite you in the ass.  
DS: dont need to hear about what you and bro get up to okay  
DS: youre on this board to help our new grey family members  
DS: preemptive shut the fuck up that doesnt include me jackass  
DS: understand the level of lunacy that permeates everything we do  
AR: Down boy. Just trying to provide some explanation to rose is all.  
DS: dude just remember where those processing cycles got copied off from  
DS: youre not immune to the irony facepalm reacharound of strider-lalonde brilliance  
AR: Course not dave. Ive been fucked by the same problem thats why im commiserating.  
DS: oh  
AM: which is dave f0r "sorry amaranthine i wasn't thinking". 0u0.

Dave facepalms in silence, which is, well, not really embarrassing or weird to the people not on the broadcast, because at least three side conversations are going on at any family meeting, and someone watching without that knowledge would think you're all spastic flailers with neurological problems.

Well, they'd be one-third right.

John Egbert private comm burst to  Dave Strider  
JE: dude. don't get upset that your matesprit isn't "backing you up in front of family" or something. remember the deal you made with rose?  
DS: yes i fucking remember the no family meeting strife deal john i just-  
JE: dave. chill. you guys are fine, she loves you, you love her, get copacetic, strider.  
JE: hehehehe. goddamn i've never seen you this stressed by a relationship. you two really are kinda serious, huh?  
DS: im not fucking this up john  
JE: good. just let it go.

You accompany your words with a shove, knocking Dave's chair sideways. Aradia grabs it and levers him back into place with a faint smile of apology, which he nods to and grips her hand, and you feel successful.

Nepeta Lejion private comm burst to  John Egbert  
NL: :33 < *the vicious hunter stalks her purrey, who has been running for a very long time now. she knows it must be getting exhausted, but she knows it's worth hunting the toughest prey of all: the truth!*  
JE: > *the tool-using omnivore is a bit freaked out, because he didn't know he was hiding anything.*  
NL: X33 < john!!! you have b33n shipping!  
JE: > oh. not hugely, i mean dave's just my bud, i gotta watch out for him. also aradia has time powers and death powers and just plain old powers, so i'm glad when she's not pissed!  
NL: :33 < i am soooo not letting you back out of this! you're gonna help me update all my lists!!!

Shit. Well, you've done worse things for the sake of moirallegiance. So has Nepeta, for that matter.

JE: > 'kay.  
NL: X33 < really??? You mean it???  
JE: > 'course i do! c'mon nep, i don't let my moirails down do i?  
NL: :33 < no! no you do not!  
NL: :33 < *the mighty huntress leaps off her purrey. the truth has been found, and she will let it go… fur now!!!* X33  
JE: > *the spear-carrying neolithic hunter is still pretty freaked out, but he manages to stumble after the vicious feline. there's a lot of truth out there for them to catch*  
JE: <>  
NL: <>

"Sollux Captor, yellow blood psychic, whereabouts unknown. Terezi Pyrope, teal blood Legislacerator, whereabouts unknown. Eridan Ampora, violet blood asshole, et cetera. Feferi Peixes, royal tyrian blood." You raise a hand and nod. "And yeah, of course I understand we - like, the entire Coalition "we" - were _already_ trying to find the potential heir to the throne of the Empire."

You pause because the roar of engine synchs up with your motion detectors, and your girlfriend/quadrant-swapper pulls her jetbike into a circling pattern ten meters above the deck, then jumps down. With the kind of haste he only dares around machines, your other moirail leans far forward from the bike's back seat to grip the controls and attempt an actual landing.

You stand, stir the wind to slow her fall, then use your left arm for the catch. Vriska, still grinning with a mad troll-adrenaline rush, kisses you with just enough bite to draw blood, then flips out of your hold and onto the floor.

You turn back to the table. "But obviously I have my own assets. What I need is a way to deploy them."

"It's not going to be fucking easy," Karkat interjects, his Vriska Present=True snarl flipping on like a switch. "The Empire's security has gone from paranoid to shoot first and then ask questions of your putrefying corpse." Director English confirms this with a nod.

Equius walks up and puts a hand on your shoulder. Nepeta kicks off her chair and lands on the other side of the table, squeezing in between the two of you. "I'm not going to try the human - or troll - element. It's time to use some tech and some brains. But - don't get me wrong, Rose, I love my battlecruiser and it's the best present I've ever gotten from you _or_ the interdimensional terrors that haunt my dreams now - I don't have the ship to do it."

"We can handle that, John," your Nanna says, but her posture is all serious-business-face. "For how many?"

You look around and consider. "Sixteen."

She glances to Dr. Harley (senior), Jade, and Rose. "We can provide the materials…"

"We have the technical expertise to build a stealth ship," Rose assures you both. "If not the workforce."

"There's been a blasted troubling little bumfucker of a matter, though," Director English interjects. "Seems the Empire's been able to insert at least one highblood with psychic capabilities into Free Alternia, and possibly Earth. We haven't reeled in the little scamp of a spy yet because we know there might be subtler ones out there."

"So they're catching up on espionage as well as mass murder," you summarize, trying to take it in stride. "We'll need an inviolate construction crew and facility to build it, then. We're going to take this sucker deep into the Romulan Neutral Zone and I don't want them knowing our specs."

Rose just sighs at the return of your classic science fiction references, but that expression passes rather quickly, replaced by the shock on everyone's face - okay, almost everyone's face - as your empty chair hurls into the sky, spinning around and landing gently on the other side of the table.

Aradia lowers her arm, flexes her fingers, and smiles. "I can handle that."

Well, it's like they say, give a man the power to fly and he'll still be freaked as fuck when he's reminded someone else can do it too. Although you're pretty sure you would have trashed the shit out of both chair and deck if you'd tried that. The winds only seem to be… well, it sounds stupid when you think it directly, but… "happy", when they're near you. When you direct them even a bit away they tend to tear things apart with the fury of the STORM UNLEASHED-

That thought kind of got away from you in a dangerous direction. You feel Equius's squeeze your shoulder in a (comforting/crushing, pick one based on your level of cyber/bio-augmentation) grip before you can reach for him. You're dangerous, but that doesn't make you a bad person. And you have very, very good help.

You glance around, pat both your moirails on the shoulder, slip out from their grasp, and with a snap of updraft land on the table. You put your fists to your hips and look down. Your family is a little grim, but not hostile. "Business time. I want to know why I'm the specialest freak from my family of freaks - okay, yes, Dave, you too - and why I have _this_." The winds roar around you, stirring up microparticles into a haze that your words still rip through. "And I already know _what_ the reason is. I want to know who added the zero element to our cohort."

There's a tilting of heads, a turning of faces, a flickering of expressions, an explosion of electronic communication, and-

"I did."

DAD?

He takes another puff on his pipe, and his voice is the same soothing baritone. Maybe your dad should've been a jazz singer. "I obtained the sample. I included it in your synthesis materials."

You. Did not plan for this and oh man you are _confused_ (so much that you let go of the wind and the dust flies off). You thought it would be Nanna or Director English or Dr. Harley, pragmatic and devoted beyond obsession to their humanity-saving project (you've never wondered where you get it from). Or Dr. Lalonde or Dirk, willing to screw with things majorly for the sake of their own confusing and semi-random goals. Not Dad. Dad never had any duplicity to him. You were only surprised when you found out he was a physicist and not a comic because of the whole harlequin debacle, and _that_ only happened because you were a kid and not the best communicator.

"All of us, or just the boys?" Rose knows when to take over from you very well. She's a little too good at predicting what will stupefy you, which is why your first Strider/Lalonde relationship ended even faster than your old college try with Dave.

"All four of you. You all have extraordinary potential and capabilities. But that wouldn't be enough."

"Enough for what?" Dave is not polite. He's cold, and Striders know cold. "What did you know?"

"What do you know about us?" Karkat demands the moment Dave finishes, and for a wonder his voice is barely louder than Strider's.

"I knew what we would be threatened by."

That causes a whole new eruption. You flip back off the table, spin wind and drop to your feet, leaning heavily on-

Vriska?

"Your expression's reaaaaaaaally pitiful right now," she reassures you, her expression sympathetic like you didn't think it was possible for her to be. It doesn't keep her from groping your ass "And I hate seeing you pitiful when you should be strong," she adds, claw tracing across your neck and piercing your jugular.

 **«Biofeedback: Coagulation on atmosphere exposure increase 700%, durability mode»** you think a moment before she does that, knowing Vriska like you do. Your Lalonde-designed platelets do their work and your blood blackens and hardens into a shell around your neck. "I need that to live, mate," you murmur. "And I'm really weak when I'm dead, Vris. No challenge at all."

She sighs, bored, and settles for tracing your cheekbones.

"Enough." Your words are quiet, almost rasping. Everyone hears them better than the shouting. "Dad. I refuse to believe you acted with any malice towards us. I'd really like to know the whole story, however."

"John," he says, and you realize he's never looked away from you since he started talking. "I'm very proud of you. I'm very proud of all four of you, in fact. You give me more hope for the future of humanity and peace than I have had in a very long time. But you're not ready for the answer to that question." He lifts a hand against objections. "It's not a matter of age, mother. You're not ready either. None of you are." His eyes, easily his strongest distinguishing feature, are still locked on you. "But you're close. I think you know what you need."

You nod, slowly. "The Horrorterrors aren't the only capital-P Power on our side, are they, Dad?"

He smiles, and it's beautiful, the smile of an infinitely proud parent. "No, John. And they weren't the first either."

"That's all I need." You kiss Vriska and step out from her grasp. "Send the materials Rose needs to Ceres orbit with civilian contractors."

You pause and pull the dramatic half-turn on Nanna and Director English and Dr. Harley. "We'll be on Baker Station."

**Quiet [Baker's Station]**

**September 19, 2414, 1955 Greenwich Mean Time**  
Amaranthine Robot has joined ENCRYPTED PROTOCOL: NEURAL HAZARD, MOTHERFUCKER, BACK OFF narrowcast Baker Control  
AR: Okay kids got your last shipment here.  
AR: There gonna be a briefing or am i too old for the inside loop?  
DS: robo-bro you are less emotionally mature than i am  
DS: and thats motherfucking saying something  
DS: welcome to the  _Sovereign Slayer_ design committee  
DS: john did you set up this fucking cast to reformat me  
RL: Actually, I did. Only specific phrases. This undertaking deserves the solemnity.  
JE: yes thanks rose. invoking strider-lalonde peace treaty of 2409 now. kanaya you're the arbiter.  
KM: I Will Treat My Duties With The Solemnity They Deserve  
KV: JOHN I WISH YOU'D TAKEN ME UP ON MY OFFER. THE TERM "EXPOSED" DOES NOT FULLY ENCOMPASS THE MANNER IN WHICH WE ARE WAGGLING OUR WASTE CHUTES AT THE SENSORS OF ANYONE WHO SO MUCH AS BRUSHES OUR GRAVITIC FIELD.  
JE: no because the terms "abadoned", "graveyard", and "atmosphere-leaking wreck filled with century-old dead bodies" do.  
AM: they say they're n0t angry at us! they're mostly just glad it's 0ver.  
DS: you dont gotta do the ghost report everywhere ara it spooks the chronologically impaired  
KV: IMPAIRED? I'M THE ONE WHO ACTUALLY SEES TIME LIKE IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE SEEN BY SANE SPECIES.  
DS: and i could do that if i felt like cutting off my ears and stuffing my scooped-out eyes into the sockets  
JH: eww!!  
NL: XOO < eww!!!  
EZ: =--= That is highly inappropriate and 100d imagery.  
JE: > additional disgust registered with your choice of metaphors, dave.  
JE: and can we keep the sniping to a minimum? karkat you had a status report yeah? we could try focusing on business for a change.  
KV: FINE, IF STRIDER CAN-  
DS: fine, if karks can-  
AR: (John, dude they are worse than me and dirk. How do you even do that HOW DOES IT WORK?)  
JE: senior agent and mobassador karkat vantas give me your fucking report or so help me i will send you AND dave on a tour of saturn's stratosphere!  
KV: OKAY, WE'RE COOL, EGBERT, WE'RE FROSTY. MY AGENTS FOUND TEREZI.  
DS: where  
VS: Yawwwwwwwwn.  
KV: TROLL RURA PENTHE.  
RL: John, I blame you for this.  
KV: IT'S THE MOST CONTEXTUALLY ACCURATE TRANSLATION AND YOUR SPOKEN ALTERNIAN IS TERRIBLE, LALONDE. SHUT YOUR FOOD CHUTE.  
VS: Hahahaha!!!!!!!! Miss Legislacer8r thrown into the deepest pit to die!!!!!!!!  
AM: n0, n0t the deepest.  
DS: and awkward moment for three… two… one…  
JE: Operation Shawshank, priority one.  
JE: a: shut up rose, i like the name.  
JE: b: shut up vriska, we need her.  
VS: Sh8t 8p?!?!?!?! We are soooooooo 8lack right now 8uddy, I was all for it!  
JE: oh.  
JE: …  
JE: you just want to rub her nose in it.  
JE: whatever! as good a motivation as any. and if we're black you better have a daaaaaaaamn good plan to compete with mine by the time we get there.  
RL: None of which will actually happen if we don't complete this ship. Back to the drive manifold placement, perhaps? We've left it on the proverbial back burner for three hours now. It has, as I believe all three gentlemen in our family would agree, been left hanging long enough.  
AR: Oh, is that all. Good thing you brought the heavyweight, rose.  
RL: …  
RL: Did you just broadcast the sound of cracking your knuckles?  
AR: Had to, sis, no sound in space.  
JE: > sigh. Eq, can you grab the several tons of ntherium being shoved at us by the overly talky robot, so he can focus on design? i'll have you back in time for the second wave revisions, you know that's your favorite part anyway.  
EZ: =--= Yes. There will undeneighably be flaws in the initial design.  
RL: You're walking a fine line, Mr. Zahhak.  
VS: (Psst, Nepeta. TOTALLY BLACK)  
NL: :33 < (i knooooow!!!)  
EZ: =--= Nepeta. Stop this speculation, it is ridiculous.  
JE: > you guys know we noticed you requisition a bottle of wine every time you have a very _private_ argument over design docs? :B  
JE: yeah that's right i'm the _cunning_ dorkass, don't forget.  
JH: hey!!  
JE: jade you're not cunning, you're more brilliant. occasionally underhanded but i pretty much have the E-C-H-E genetic monopoly on scheming in our generation.  
JH: says the gene-twin not even in the hta!!  
JE: no, no i am not. think about that one for a minute.  
JE: alright people. we have a ship to build, an execution to stop, and an empire to topple. let's try and be as coordinated as our chaotic assess can manage at this.  
JE: there's only one real goal.  
JE: the end of the war.  
JE: victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On browsing the wiki for typing quirk correctness I noticed what should have been totally obvious before! Nepeta and Equius's quirks make a <>. John has also noticed this, which is why he uses > when he'a chatting with his moirails now. Or it might just be an extended _Zork_ tribute. Equius changed his quirk to =--= to represent a newfound sense of balance, his chat laser being upgraded to a refracting laser, and a cool set of barbells too because why not.
> 
> <=--=> extended moirallegiance triumvirate is go.


	5. (Re)fraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ever get the feeling you're being watched?

## 2: Viewpoint

 **T+198 hours**  
YOU HAVE BEEN THROUGH WORSE, but it never stopped you from getting angry even when things were better.

Except you're not angry now. Not really; not at all, based on the amount of yelling you're doing. Which is… none. ~~You're probably actually straining your voice from all the not-yelling you're doing.~~ Okay, that's stupid. But you have an indefatigable mellow going on.

It's easy enough to explain: _you're all here_. Except for Terezi, Sollux, Eridan, and Feferi, every person you've had a positive emotion about is in this airless wreck of a ghost station with you (plus Vriska "I am a massive x8 tool" Serket, but John is ~~astonishingly~~ understandably good at handling her. As far as you can tell, he and Dave had the same kind of relationship, only with fewer claws).

And yeah, you've been stuck in environmental suits for coming up on 200 hours now, but the cabin of the _Sovereign Slayer_ has been airtight since hour 83. You can live with that. You even stopped arguing with John, because he _was_ right about this place.

Breached, powerless, still fatally irradiated a hundred years later - Baker Station lives up to its reputation. Since your technical expertise extends to the use of a mop, a waste containment cube, and a variety of guns, you have little to do besides check intelligence reports and run the government of Free Alternia, so you spend a lot of time watching vids of Baker's Rebellion. Some dramatizations, some decades-later documentaries, and inevitably, some combat footage. And one short feed, given to you on a solid-state read-only copy-protected node, only twenty minutes total pieced together from a timeframe of nine hours, from the optical implants of Dominion Shadow Jane Crocker. That's the way you see the station die in real-time.

Yeah. You have reason to be relaxed. You guys - not a one of you, not even Serket - haven't fucked up _nearly_ as bad as humanity did a century ago.

You couldn't prevent the war. You know that, you're a fucking troll, whatever your blood's chemical makeup, and you're not stupid either. But when John gets mopey and worries that maybe submitting to the Empire to begin with would have been better, you smack the _shit_ out of him. This is the best it could have fucking gone for the majority of both your dim-ocular-lidded, food-chute-breathing species.

John won't admit that under torture, of course. But you? You know goddamn well what happens when you try to hold to an impossible standard. You get your wrists seared to hell, shot with an arrow, and some poor dumpass a thousand years later gets your mutant blood and a sign that's the product of one fucking disturbed mind in his followers somewhere. Signless Christ, some people just won't stop flagellating themselves.

At least John has it under control when he actually takes command. You're still watching, of course. If he stumbles, you'll be there to prop him up. _FUCK_ that blueblood paranoia friends-are-enemies-waiting-to-happen shit. He is your gogdamn amigo and you still owe him a saved life or three. A supportive (angry, shouting) shoulder is just a fraction of that.

You make sure to keep Nepeta between you and Equius though. Jesus Sufferer, you had enough trouble explaining your particular Alternian-Cult of the Sufferer-Terran hybrid of a friendship with John to her before she could disembowel you, and Nepeta's the one who wants to jump your bone bulge. You owe Equius just the same, and he's been around humans even longer than you have. You're still going to try and avoid misunderstandings with Lieutenant Commander Accidental Spinal Snapping. He's a fucking boogeyman even with Free Alternia. Highest personal kill count of anyone below the Condesce and maybe the Grand Highblood. Not that you trust Imperial record-keeping, but you figure those fucks are inflating it anyway. You're glad to have Zahhak on your side, you're just going to avoid making him angry or jealous while he's not _exactly_ in your chain of command.

So you're in the mostly-functional main cabin, chugging another gigantic latte (Signless _Christ_ , troll monoculture seriously deprived you of culinary options. You would secretly love the squishy pink bastards for their food alone, even if they weren't so relentlessly _understandable_ ), when another automated alert pops up on your implant.

This is nothing new. You're Free Alternia's elected Mobassador and spymaster, you have about a million pre-set alerts for various conditions.

This one you only made a few days ago, though.

Karkat Vantas narrowband uplink to  John Egbert  
KV: JOHN, IMPERIAL FLEET MOVEMENT IN THE DIRECT NEIGHBORHOOD OF TROLL RURA PENTHE AS OF 6 HOURS AGO.  
JE: why?  
KV: WHY ARE YOU- OH FUCK IT *IS* MY JOB TO KNOW THAT. OKAY. LEAK FROM US, NONEXISTENT, AS LONG AS SERKET IS ACTUALLY DOING HER DAMN JOB.  
JE: she is. trust me.  
KV: OKAY, OKAY, I DO. AND I SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING, I DON'T NEED EMBARRASSING MIND-READING RESULTS TO CONFIRM IT. YOU REALIZE WHAT KIND OF BLACKMAIL YOU'VE ARMED HER WITH?  
JE: i asked her not to abuse her knowledge.  
KV: YOU ASKED HER.  
JE: yes. i did.  
KV: … ONLY YOU, EGBERT. YOU ARE LITERALLY THE ONLY PERSON I CAN IMAGINE WHO COULD GET HER TO ACT LIKE A SANE, NON-BULGE-BITING TROLL.  
JE: i'll take the compliment and ignore the insult towards my taste in matesprits.  
KV: ARE YOU GUYS FLUSHED *AGAIN*? YOU KNOW QUADRANT FLIPPING LIKE THIS CAN GET OUT OF CONTROL.  
JE: i think i have a handle on it.  
KV: ONCE AGAIN, OKAY. ONLY YOU. NOW. ODDS THEY FIGURED OUT OUR FULL-COHORT OBJECTIVE: 17:1 AGAINST. ODDS THEY FIGURED OUT THE _Sovereign Slayer's_ DESIGN AND PURPOSE: 38:1 AGAINST. ODDS THEY FIGURED OUT THE COMPLEX SHIT BETWEEN ME AND PYROPE AND DECIDED TO LAY AN INCREDIBLY CLUMSY TRAP: 2:1 IN FAVOR.  
JE: that sounds like a good assessment to me. recommendations?  
KV: I HAVEN'T BEEN FOLLOWING THE TECH TALK. OKAY MAYBE I CAN'T FOLLOW THE TECH TALK, FUCKING ISSUE A JUDICIAL REDRESS AGAINST ME. WHERE ARE WE?  
JE: if aradia, equius, dave, and i all exhaust ourselves working, nineteen hours to launch. you're gonna have to command the pilot flight.  
KV: WHAT.  
JE: perks of rank, fuckass ;B  
KV: I WILL CRASH YOUR NEW SHIP SIX HUNDRED AND TWELVE TIMES JUST LEAVING THIS STATION, JOHN, WHAT THE FUCK?  
JE: i said command, genius. tav is a great pilot and yes believe it or not vris can handle operations, especially with nep running nav and rose on signals/ecm. you just gotta make the big decisions because, guess what?  
KV: …  
JE: you ARE in fact the fuckass i trust most to make the big decisions. so, do a pal a favor?  
KV: YEAH. OKAY, JOHN. I'LL TAKE CARE OF IT.

 

 **T+222**  
you are MOTHERFUCKING BITCHTITS FANTASTIC.  
You were dealing with some seriously harsh shit. Just motherfucking horsebeast shit from every goddamn motherfucker about your motherfucking matesprit, like he was some kinda traitor or shit. Like he was FUCKING DEAD (no no NO). Lotta MOTHERFUCKING HEADS HAD TO ROLL. Because those FUCKING LIES could not MOTHERFUCKING STAND. YOU MIGHTA BEEN IN FUCKING TROUBLE, the bodies piled up to make a barricade but they were bringing in motherfucking SHIPS TO BLOW YOU TO BITS.

Then he came back. Or he was back, and you two were fucking fighting side by side or something. And yeah he was smaller and skinnier and didn't have horns and he said his name was Dave but you didn't fucking care. They called him a human and called you a traitor and an idiot but you didn't fucking care. YOU FUCKING CUT THEM ALL UP, THE BOTH OF YOU. And Aradia, who you guess was always kind of a (FUCKING RUSTBLOOD) cool sis, you never really got into that whole deal with the FLARP stuff though and that part of your friend-crew. But she was WICKED TEARING UP with those PSYCHIC REACHAROUNDS, RIPPING OUT SPINES AND SHIT (HERETIC BLOOD FILTH SCUM).

And then there was the white ball-head motherfucker and a whole shitload of talking you didn't get until your motherfucking best matesprit-bro all up and said "Fucking kill him."

Except that didn't work, and he got shot but… like, instead of all that something else happened at the same time, you were all on this shit hanging out with motherfucking Karkat (and where had he been? You hella missed your best friend but you had totally forgotten to ask about him. Maaan, you are a shitty-ass best friend!) and Equius and Tavbro and a buncha humans who were all kinda small and squishy except that John motherfucker, he made Equius feel like, light and skinny to you.

But that shit all had like a bubble around it, like when you were sopor-dreaming about some shit that never happened like that game and your goat-dad and you never being a Subjugglator.

Except everyone kept acting like _this_ hazy memory stuff was real and the crazy days of fighting the white ball guy wasn't so you kinda just flowed with it.

Then you met some other humans and man they had weird names. And they were like, meditearers, only you didn't realize that till afterward cuz they just talked cool to you and gave you some dope-ass pills instead of trying to cull you, so you didn't have to rip any of their heads off. And you felt pretty good about that.

Then the pills started actually kicking in. It was kinda hard to tell for a while because you were all. OVER. the. PLACE. Like, you were in a trippy ass giant ship with just your friends and Dave and some humans, and then you were in an even bigger ship only this one was crammed with humans who were totally eyeing you, only it was cool, Equius or Nepeta was always watching you and you didn't really feel any need to (WRECK FACES) or nothing. Then you all hung out in John's respite block in this MASSIVE ASS hive for a couple days - and wasn't that fucking wicked, that humans slept at night and had little sun-windows and decks and shit built into their hives? You liked their sun, it was still too bright for a motherfucker to stare at (you kinda remember what happened to Terezi had something to do with staring at suns), but it felt all warm and comfortable. And then Dave showed you shades and you discovered motherfucking paradise. Even if Karbro was all getting his shout on again, well that was just motherfucking normal wasn't it? Then there was that plane that was just motherfucking gliding around the world and if that wasn't the biggest motherfucking miracle outside of Dave you didn't even know.

Then you went into space. The suit was weird as fuck and Karbro made you listen to his instructions until you could repeat them five times in a row without fucking up. And then you just kinda chilled. Everybody was up and working hard on this shit that was way too heavy for you and Karbro was busy watching all these vids of humans killing each other that just kinda twitched something in you (UNWORTHY FREAKS) and made you feel sick and down to see it.

Then Dave came over to talk to you. He looks different but he's still, like, DAVE. He had a lot of stuff to say and you weren't sure you got it all. Shit was MOTHERFUCKING HEAVY. And it kinda hurt, but in a good way? And you were basically okay with what he said, and Aradia was too kinda. And you figured that was good enough for you.

Now this ship is done, and it is motherfucking WICKED. Half of everybody is sleeping it off. Those sopor masks are a motherfucking miracle, you have never seen a calmer buncha trolls and humans just lying on each other like a buncha tired barkbeasts, guys are just motherfucking adorable. You're chilling in the main giant-ass room that's the bridge or command something, and has enough seats for, like, half your Subjugglator Chorus.

Uh, before you killed them all. Man. You killed them all. That is fucking _heavy_.

"Hey, Karbro."

The command chair turns slowly, and your tiny-ass mutant moirail best bud glares at you from under the hand pressed hella tight to his face. He looks a lot bigger in that grey uniform with the swirl on the shoulder, though. You are so STOKED about your own uniform, that motherfucking swirl is awesome. It has ALL OF THE FUCKING COLORS. All of them.

"What, Gamzee?"

Shit. What… oh, yeah. "Kar, bro… I hella killed, like, forty of my Subjugglator bros."

Karkat gives one of those hella weird scowls he only started doing these days. If it was someone else they would totally be smiling but it's your fucking Karbro there's no way.

"Fucking good, Gamzee."

"Karkat, best bud, man. Shouldn't I feel, like… guilt?"

"No. Fuck them. The only murderous fucker in clown makeup that shouldn't be fed to sharks feet-first is you."

"Oh."

Karkat sighs the long slow way he does when he's all shouted out and gets up. Yanno, maybe he isn't really that small any more. He can get his hands on your shoulders without stressing. "Gamzee. It's great that you're sane enough to have a conscience now. It is even - and I'm only saying this once, so fucking savor it - a motherfucking miracle. But - Jesus Sufferer, you big dumb beautiful bastard. You're not evil, Gamzee. You're not even a bad troll. I've known you for how many gogdamn sweeps? You just up and fucking _fractured_ , dumbass. The part of you I knew _broke_ and there was this- this fucking- _SUBJUGGLATOR_ underneath." Karkat's hitting your chest, not angry but hard, his face all mashed into your shirt, his other hand yanking on your shoulder. "But you were still fucking there, Gamzee. You were always there. I. Don't. Even. Have. Fucking. That." You don't feel the wet but you see the red streams down his cheeks, down your shirt.

His voice is ragged and hoarse, worse than Karbro's ever shouted himself out. "Forty? I killed a lot more than forty a long fucking time ago Gamzee. I killed trolls in their fucking recuperacoons, on the fucking load gaper, while they were fucking pailing. I killed with words and mobs and I killed with _justice_ and laws and I killed with ships and missiles. I killed so many…"

You grab him as tight as you fucking can, pull his head up and rest his chin on your shoulder, cradle the back of his skull. "Shit's heavy, brother."

"Shit is _motherfucking_ heavy," Karkat mumbles into your shoulder.

 

 **T+234**  
y0u hated dreaming f0r a l0ng, l0ng time. You dreamed only of death and the dead, clawing, grabbing, whispering the things you couldn't unhear.

That ended when you died. When you escaped what was written for you.

Now your dreams follow the paths your waking steps have laid out for them. You walk into the multiple pasts, the single future. You talk to the dead and listen to the pre-real. And you remember what you've done.

>   
> _"No, he's fucking talking out of his ass. It's not obligation with him, it's genuine fucking love and he's trying to hide it." Amaranthine's irises spin and cycle, seeing things outside your reality, seeing through you, maybe, just maybe, seeing_ you _._

> _"He doesn't act like he's obligated to me."_

> _"Bingo. Dave never does a goddamn thing easily - and goddamn if the kid can't let things go. It's a different kind, if that means anything to you, but it's still what you guys would call flushed. Dave loves you. He also still loves your doped-out murderclown buddy he was fucking before he met you. But he'll forget Makara. If you tell him to."_

> _"Really." You're not actually asking a question. You both basically know the answer._

> _"He'll never show the slightest hint of emotion about it."_

> _You almost smile at that. If this wasn't Dave's brother you could almost misinterpret that answer. "And inside, I'll be killing a small piece of him."_

> _"A piece not in love with you," Robo says, even quieter than before._

> _You shake your head._

> _"So? Are you going to drop him? Dirk wants to kick out the clown. He much prefers you."_

> _"That makes it sound like you should be against me."_

> _"No, I figured out pretty easily the way to get his ironic earth goat is to support Dave making his own goddamn decisions." His eyes pulse again, going high power, processing or transmitting or just thinking. "And helping you do the same."_

> _You skip ahead a few lines. "Do you think that's really a solution?"_

> _Amaranthine's eyes blur, following the paths of probable conversation that you walked around. "That depends on you kids. What I think is that you're immortal, you have the ability to try it, and neither you nor Dave is willing to hurt the other, which just means you'll both hurt each other all the more."_

> _"Thank you."_

> _"Anything for family."_

You stir at the feeling of temporal disjunction. You're at the side and base of the pile of exhausted workers in John's Mega-Hammock(tm) in the crew quarters. Dave is already blurring where he lies on top of you. You run your fingers - and claws - gently through his hair, and you help him focus.

"You're not abandoning me, Dave," you tell him.

"I know." He says it like he might. John rolls over in his sleep, drool now gliding off Equius's duty tunic, arm smacking Dave on the forehead. "Dumpass," he mutters at his friend. "Ara. Don't strain yourself for this."

You spin time out and watch it fracture backwards. You follow the crimson blaze down that other timeline, you watch a Possible Dave coalesce. You watch him enter Gamzee's respite block. And you keep watching, and what you see doesn't even impede your work, your stabilization and weaving of two timelines into one.

You keep stroking Dave's short silver-white hair where he rests on you, too. "It's not a strain, Dave." And it isn't. He may never understand why you're doing this, why you not only accept it, why you helped Amaranthine suggest it to begin with.

You will never want to own Dave Strider. You just want to exist in the same infinity.

That's not too much to ask for. And you will have it.

 

 **T+246**  
You Dont Know If You Can Handle The Calm. That is quite possibly the most ridiculous statement you've ever thought, and yet it is undoubtedly truthful. Ordinarily, You are the calmness. You find yourself amiss without chaos to struggle against. Having to so consistently strain to keep things, trolls, and Vriska in one piece, you feel weary and confused upon not being required to do anything.

"One gets used to the situation, but not quickly. Taking up a hobby is a useful method," Rose suggests, your quiet second shift almost relaxing on the bridge despite your ongoing mission and dangerous location.

"What can you… even find for a hobby… that you don't already do for… work?" Tavros asks, spun around at the pilot's board to face you and Rose.

"I fight, actually," Rose replies with a single arched eyebrow. "A skill we have no shortage of in my family, but I consider my marksmanship to only be on an amateur and recreational level."

"Right… everything else you're professional at," Tavros says, with a New Tavros smile, bordering on - smirk, possibly? Then he winks at you.

"I have to make up for the rest of my cohort," Rose says, eyebrow still raised as her glance shifts to you and the faintest hint of a smile, detectable only to you and experienced Striders, blooms on her face. "Oh yes. Entirely professional," she says in a tone that is anything but professional. It's almost a purr, really. Oh dear.

You are (stymied? saved?) by the blaring light and contradictory quiet beep from Rose's console. Dr. Lalonde swivels around and taps her HUD band, drawing out virtual displays. "Imperial Dreadship at 38 AU, velocity approaching .98 c, predicted course intersection in 17 minutes," she reports, returning instantly to her normal smooth _actual_ professionalism (which, you will never admit (she already knows), drives you even wilder sometimes).

Tavros snaps his position back to standard as well. "Plotting evasion."

"Belay that, helm!" You'd actually forgotten Vriska was in the command seat, she'd been so uncharacteristically silent. "No changes to current heading."

"The _Sovereign Slayer's_ stealth systems are uniquely capable, but this Dreadship is Dersetech-rebuilt. At the projected perihelion of our current courses they _will_ detect us if they are even marginally alert, Serket."

"Commander Serket." Your moirail's icy calm is more frightening, more disturbing than any of her mostly-blustering usual rage. "You accepted Fleet Captain Egbert's decision to place Mobassador Vantas in command of this ship, and myself in control of operations. Are you now denying the Fleet Captain's authority?" The tone is a little more familiar, something bordering on the slope to rage, which you've heard from Vriska a few too many times.

"No," Rose says politely, hands poised at her console.

"Then give me the trust you're giving them! Helm - _Junior Fleetleader Nitram_ \- no changes to course." Vriska continues to talk, but she mostly seems to be ordering herself around. "Gutting all weapon pre-firing power systems. Full emission dampening online." Freed from gesturing, her hands lock onto the arms of her chair, tight enough to make it bend (if it wasn't built for John).

You're up from your medical console at and her side before you're consciously aware of moving. "Vriska, are you-?"

"Not now, Fussyfangs," she growls through clenched fangs, but the look in her eyes as they flash aside and meet your gaze for just a moment is almost grateful for your concern.

 _That_ truly worries you. You return to your seat a little shaken.

Rose's eyebrow has returned to its upright and locked position when she glances back at you, but genuine worry is evident (to you) on her face. Oh dear. You're really not ready for _both_ of the women you care for to suddenly drop their facades.

"Trust her," you say quietly enough for only Rose. You aren't certain why you just said that, and you really probably shouldn't, and most definitely, you should be retracting it right now-

No, you think you've made your decision, it is the correct decision, and you're certainly not going to be second-guessed by yourself.

"Three minutes to perihelion." Rose is tense (only you notice), Tavros is tense, _you're_ tense, because unfortunately you've noticed, so is Vriska.

You can't take your eyes off your moirail, so at first you think you might be seeing things. You muster the will to shake your head, then look back, but the winking motes of light remain. Infinitesimal bursts of bright white light, too small to be anything but perfect in their simplicity, gathering in the uncounted tens of thousands around Vriska. They shift forms and sizes in more sequences you can fathom, until patterns suddenly blossom from them, spreading with blinding speed until every one of the millions (billions?) of lights is the same form - and then every die rolls the same result.

Vriska releases her grip and her left hand pops off the chair like a mechanical device. She points at Tavros. "Emission dampening is off. Full sublight."

"They'll-" he begins.

"No. Sensor systems on the Dreadship have suffered a catastrophic power failure," Rose interjects, her voice perfectly (consciously) neutral. "My apologies, Commander."

"Right." Vriska can't muster the energy to put a single bit of taunt into that, and you're at her side helping her stand before you're aware of that. "First time I reached that far, Fussyfangs," she tells you with a disturbingly harmless grin. "I wasn't _compleeeeeeeetely_ sure it'd work."

"You need to rest. Can someone else comman-"

The bridge doors slip open with a whoosh of air that John insisted on adding, because totally silent doors would result in too many comic misunderstandings. He tapped his nose when he said that. You have no idea what the significance of that gesture was, and uniquely, neither did Rose. She suggested you write it off as one of his many eccentricities.

Fleet Captain Egbert himself walks in, yawning and stretching his arms enough to scrape the ceiling (if it hadn't been specifically built with him in mind). "So! What'd I miss?"

 

 **T+252**  
it is possibly too ironic that you the time guy are impatient as fuck right now. Like, it may be going past ironic into actual irony. And you fucking shouldn't be. She's your fucking _kismesis_. Or ex-kismesis? Or shared? You don't know what the fuck the actual deal is, you and Karks decided it would be stupid and insulting (in a non-caliginous way) to try and work out this triangle without actually talking to TZ.

You still shouldn't be this fucking _concerned_ about her. Especially right up here next to Aradia _and_ Gamzee (and after the shit you put Aradia through to square things with Gamzee. The ongoing shit, really, since one loop doesn't cut it, and she's probably going to have to work on your splice more). Alright, whatever, you're just not gonna be a dick about it. Pyrope's probably fine.

Aradia pats your shoulder in a single gesture that says perfectly "i kn0w what y0ure thinking, relax. it's 0kay". You keep looking at the feed from Troll Rura Penthe.

You're ten light-minutes out, but you played the role of resident script kiddie and popped a few programs robo-bro set up for you, wormed into the intense satellite system. You're all looking at the feed, have been for all two minutes since you brought it up, and nobody has commented yet on the massive plume of smoke and cellblocks shattered by some _seriously_ high-energy weapons.

"Alright, skip to present," John decides, and the feed blurs forward. The smoke remains for at least three planetary days (over 110 hours) before subsiding enough for pre-repair crews to get in there and clear the area. They do so by killing any inmates who miraculously survived before they can get in the way of the repair crews. Once the noticeably lower-caste construction workers get on the field, there are a lot more bodies being carried out. But they work fast, and the area is reinforced with tensile ablative concrete by the time the cam gets to T-0 Hours.

The info worm finishing its work, you flip an overlay onto the video. "PYROPE, T., GRAND TREASON. VERDICT: DISMEMBERMENT" hovers next to a wireframe box of her cell, at the exact center of the destruction.

"That explains the ship activity," John comments in a smartass voice that would have you lunging in a bloodrage at anyone that wasn't your best friend. "Okay. We'll be dropping in, let's say seven hours. Initial team will be me, Vantas, Leijon, Strider, and Makara. Megido, Serket, Maryam, and Harley, you're our backup. First team, stick to Infiltration III equipment restrictions. Second team, you're cleared up to Combat VI. If we call you in, break everything in your path." John cheerily claps his hands once and looks around at everyone. "Karkat, Equius, Dave, and Vriska. Pre-emptively: shut up. Primary mission objective is determining if Pyrope is alive and her current location, same as it always was. If anyone lets this vid make them depressed, cynical, or sadistically happy I will smack the shit out of them _and_ restrict them to the ship. We didn't know much when we launched and we still don't know much. That's why we're going to go ask a few questions!" John is the fucking master of the cheerful grin that very quietly suggests he will tear your spine out if he has to.

You make the drop on time, all of you taking fairly similar gear - mostly next-gen variants of the HCI Revenant Skirmisher Armor, or related armors that have built in flight capabilities. John is of course the exception, wearing nothing more than the HCI Praetorian Exoskeleton, with its suite of baffling and reflective fields. The five of you drop in pairs, with Leijon and Karks taking point, you babysitting Gamzee to the ground two minutes later, and John hurling himself out of the _SS_ on the third pass, two minutes after that.

You make it in without apparent detection, help Gamzee shut off his wings (which are slick and black as night, using some kind of Dersetech bullshit to be just a bit more stealthy than the wings of flame on the last version), and find your way to the rest of your team by following the bloodstains. The bodies are hidden, of course.

"Worm inserting. Data collection is continuing," you tell John when he shows, halting his freefall plummet with a torrent of winds that decelerate him and scuff up the pavement. You're kind of weirded out by how professional you're being with John of all people, but then this _is_ literally the first time you've been under his command in a legitimate combat operation.

"Leijon, on watch, central base corridors. Vantas, leech Strider's uplink, get as much local surveillance as you can and filter for incoming. Makara, give me psychic cover, low-level."

Karkat has to nudge Gamzee. "He means lay down a light chucklevoodoo. Just enough to make people twitchy."

You feel a little bit of the vibe, but if there's any psychic power you can handle, it's the chucklevoodoo. The deep dark recesses of Dave Strider's mind? That's your fucking vacation spot by now. The monsters and demons know exactly who they're fucking with and they back the fuck off.

"In." The death sentence file (and subsequent pre-death prison arrangements, something the Empire considers secondary to the execution details) for PYROPE, TEREZI, ends on a disturbing note. "Attack occurred from outside. Unknown source, not surprising, this place's commo/signals gear is a piece of shit even compared to most pre-war."

John frowns. "Rogue faction? Execution or extraction? There's nothing obvious from our current information. Suggestions?"

You hold up a hand for silence. "Just caught a sleeper file from the trojan that hit this net before the attack. It's asking for you, Fleet Captain."

John doesn't wait more than two seconds to decide. "Play it."

You switch your visor to projection mode and flicker out the view from a security cam. It focuses on Terezi, sitting completely still in her cell.

A pair of zig-zagging horns enters the camera's view, followed by the skinny troll in gold-filigree low-profile body armor, colored a deep purple. Incongruously, he wears a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Not a tech HUD, just glasses. There's some quiet audio. You glance a John, but he shakes his head. Even he can't make it out. Then the troll hefts a gun that looks almost ridiculously long, something that makes even your greatest dick-substitute jokes sit back and say " _damn_ , son", and blows away her cell door. Terezi gets up and they talk quietly some more.

You hear hushed muttering from Karkat and Nepeta, something along the lines of "no fucking way is that-"

Terezi staggers off-screen, and the skinny troll turns to face the camera directly. "Fleet Captain Egbert. I am Hierarch Eridan Ampora. I suggest we meet. I'll be at home. See you soon."

John's face is still. Not confused like you and Gamzee, not disbelieving like Karkat and Nepeta. "Egbert to _Sovereign Strider_. Second team stand down, ship to extraction point." He flexes his hands, curling and uncurling fists. "Nepeta, get the best Imperial Fleet movement data you can from Dave and Rose, then plot the least-intercepts course to Alternia."

"Alternia?" the tiny-ass crazy cat lady troll practically chirps. "The Imperial blockade there is huge!"

"I know. So does Ampora. I think I've just been challenged." John smiles again and god _dammit_ how does he always get you with the derp act, even when you've seen him do this before?

John Egbert is not somebody you fuck with lightly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha! Canonical vindication of my idea that trolls don't have alcohol! BAM, nailed it!  
> I think that's gonna be the only speculation in this AU that's ever confirmed by Homestuck, but I don't care, I'm taking the victory. Warm fuzzy feelings are already brewing in my shriveled fanficcer heart.
> 
> If Gamzee sounds more stoner than juggalo here, well, I'm Californian, I based him more on my native species of derp.


	6. (Proto)typical

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doing the impossible starts losing the fun when people begin to _expect_ it.

**T+292 hours**  
Fleet Captain John Egbert created network Alternia Operations  
Lieutenant Commander Equius Zahhak joined network Alternia Operations  
Lieutenant Nepeta Leijon joined network Alternia Operations  
Dr. Lalonde joined network Alternia Operations  
Dr. Maryam joined network Alternia Operations  
Senior Agent Dave Strider joined network Alternia Operations  
Agent Aradia Megido joined network Alternia Operations  
Mobassador Karkat Vantas joined network Alternia Operations  
Junior Fleetleader Tavros Nitram joined network Alternia Operations  
Specialist Gamzee Makara joined network Alternia Operations  
Dr. Harley joined network Alternia Operations  
Commander Vriska Serket joined network Alternia Operations  
JE: well, it looks like we're getting a hell of a welcome wagon!  
RL: 16 Dreadships, Dersetech refitted. 18 Archeradicator Missile Destroyers, Dersetech refitted. 11 Cavalreaper Assault Carriers, Dersetech refitted. 55 Predactor Scout Gunships, Dersetech refitted.  
JE: sounds about right!  
JE: the floor is now open to suggestions and refinements on our strategy.  
KV: WHAT STRATEGY?  
JE: that would be one of the points of soliciting suggestions, karkat.  
KM: Is This Normally How You Conduct Warfare, Fleet Captain  
JE: personal names are fine, kanaya. yes it is. me personally. i can't speak for my species but i am influenced by my upbringing!  
KM: I Am More Than A Little Concerned Then  
EZ: =--= Do not be. It wor%.  
KM: I Have Had My Share Of Experience Attempting To Mediate Our Cohort Alone And It Seems To Me That The Addition Of Humans And The Myriad Relationships We Have Developed Will Not Simplify Anything  
JE: > oh! let me clarify then.  
JE: the floor is open to suggestions and comments. at the end of this planning session we're still going to do exactly whatever the hell i say, okay?  
JE: that is a rhetorical question by the way. the answer is yes. period.  
TN: Definitely, That will happen.  
KV: THE LAST TIME I FOLLOWED YOUR PLANS I GOT TO SEE EQUIUS KILL AN INDIGO PROJEXECUTOR. NO FUCKING WAY AM I GOING AGAINST YOU NOW.  
NL: :33 < yeah!!!  
VS: Stop st8ring at me, Kanaya!!!!!!!! He's my m8sprit- no, he's my fucking 8oyfriend. And he got to 8e that 8ecause he is SO DAMN 8RILLIANT.  
KM: I See  
KM: I Apologize For Causing Disorder Where There Was None  
JE: dad always said life without chaos was indistinguishable from death.  
JE: he gets kinda zen sometimes.  
RL: Or morbid, depending upon one's viewpoint.  
KV: IF WE HAVE ENOUGH CHAOS NOW CAN WE MAYBE GET DOWN TO THE POINT OF THIS?  
JE: raw combat strength, can we beat them?  
TN: John, That is three times the size of any normal fleet… Entirely Dersetech… And we have one ship, Slightly larger than a gunboat.  
JE: yup!  
JE: i'm still soliciting opinions  
VS: We can.  
VS: Oh fuck you all too!!!!!!!!  
VS: You think I can't figure the odds? You think I can't ch8nge the odds?  
JE: easy, vris. i believe you. they just don't have enough personal experience with your strength........ or your endurance.  
JH: thanks for oversharing john!!!! Xp  
AM: he's right, th0ugh. 0v0  
TN: I think she… Can do it.  
JE: we're not going to, though.  
VS: What?!?!?!?! What a8out what you just said!!!!!!!!  
JE: vris, i don't have any doubt you can make it possible for us to blow up every single ship in that fleet  
JE: but those ships are defending your homeworld and your mother grub. i'm not going to blame them for wanting to preserve your species, whatever "side" of this war they're on.  
VS: Are you planning to just let them shoot us then????????  
JE: not. at. all. :B  
JE: dave, aradia, partial aspect, permanent, up to five timeline splice. how impossible are we talking?  
DS: dunno why youre asking me  
AM: because you're the one that has to keep it together while i'm splicing, dave.  
DS: huh  
DS: alright  
DS: then dude lifting a ceres class fighter level of impossible  
JE: then we will just have to augment your ability to do the impossible, won't we?  
RL: That may be… entirely possible, actually.  
JE: i thought you'd be with me on that! we're not putting everything on one throw of the dice, though (sorry, vris).  
JE: so let me get you up to speed on what everyone's going to do.  
KV: (AND *THAT* IS HOW JOHN EGBERT MAKES A PLAN, KANAYA. WE'RE THE LUCKY PARTICIPANTS THAT SPARK THE IMPOSSIBLE, BUT NEVER DOUBT THAT THIS INSANE, BEAUTIFUL MOTHERFUCKER IS THE ONE DRIVING EVERYTHING.)  
VS: (Adm8re my 8oyfriend with 8etter word choice, Vantas!!!!!!!!!)  
KV: (OH, WHAT, ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE ME STAB MYSELF FOR IT? MATESPRIT'S MOIRAIL'S MATESPRIT, JACKASS,  
NO FIGHTING IN THE FAMILY.)  
JE: (given that via human or troll relationships, EVERYONE here is family, i'm making that a formal rule.)  
JE: (uh, kismeses excepted. obviously)  
JE: and if i could get your attention for the actual battle plan, that would rock too.  
GM: rock fucking solid! LET'S FIND OUT WHAT MOTHERFUCKER GETS WHAT.

 

 **T+294**  
You're afr8d he's 8eginning to figure out your plot. He's just too bloody _good_ at listening and _hearing_ what you're saying and what you aren't saying.

You've been a step ahead of John Egbert before. Why's it so much harder in love than in war?

But the worst part is you can't abandon this plan for a new one. You have to stick with it for a looooooooong-ass time for it to be successful!

Responsibility _sucks_.

Oh well. At least you can have the consolation prize of _totally fucking with_ Terezi, Karkat, Tavros, and everybody else. John might have an idea, but the rest of those suckers? BAM.

Ooh. Waitasec, you bet you can persuade John to _help_ you with this plan. Yeah, he'll buy it… this is gonna be so fucking great. They will _not_ know what hit them.

Of course, there's _his_ plan, the whole "getting through the Alternia blockade without killing a shitload of trolls" grand plan, which is going to be hard to pull off without giving away too much. Kanaya, and Rose, who's really been learning from her, will be the hardest to fool. But they still have preconceptions, angles you can exploit.

Of course, then there's your time assholes.

Strider you don't care about. He thinks you're dangerous, you agree, he doesn't trust you because he listens to the angry mutant too much.

Aradia, though. You're occasional kismeses (only when you're not caliginous with John), and she's just _so_ loaded up with power that you'd envy her if you weren't really aware how most of her life was miserable fucking shit. Not that you pity her for that. Her adulthood sucked? Well, your childhood was a bulge-biting pail of fail, suck it up. But she still _has_ all those assets, and that makes her a threat to your plots. Smart. Necromancer. Archaeologist. And the damn time thing.

It kind of saves you time when you're talking, though. She looks ahead and you check the odds and ten words says twenty minutes of talk. And hey, you're a busy troll here. Lot of alloys in the foundry. All of them. All the alloys.

"Vriska." _-I know what you/doubts about it/playing around?_

"Nah." _-not a lie/it's in me now/he's a prince so I'm._

"I figured." _-you'd seen him/what you're doing is/not who they thought._

"This matters." _-more than the old one/you owe/i always got it._

Aradia stops and puts her hand on your shoulder. You don't look up from your console, don't do anything to give the outward impression you're paying attention to her. "You will." _-?/?/?/too many options._

You frown, and she butts her horns against the back of your head. "Kismesis." _-never make it easy/want your life not a win/can't help without hurt._

Well, you suppose you'd better pay attention to John again. He's a _bit_ gogdamn harder to guess with luck alone.

And the sooner you get this done, the sooner you can start _your_ plan.

 

 **T+298a**  
You really must get out of the lab more often. It isn't as if you lack the family atmosphere when you're working with the Drs. Harley, Dr. Egbert, and of course, your mother. And various Strider test subjects. But there's quite a different atmosphere when it's just the four of you from the test-tube generation. And various and sundry troll friends, lovers, rivals, and all of the above.

You've actually managed to catch Equius out of uniform in the light, a feat you thought impossible. (You have never mentioned to him that your sight functions across a much wider frequency than human eyes, including the frequency of the low-energy ultraviolet-emitting glands under your eyelids. The way he insists on disrobing in the "darkness" is rather charming in its own stiff, inimical manner. Much like the rest of his stimulatingly frustrating habits.)

Stumbling upon him and John bare-chested wrestling in the hold and using your multitalented eyes to capture video was an unexpected prize. It was also an excellent method of testing the tensile strength of the hull walls.

And you've found that the displays of extreme competence that come easily to you are positively stimulating for Kanaya. (You're quite amused by the metric Alternians use for their polyamorous relationships, but you don't mind abiding by them. Your problem has never been a lack of respect for your partners' desires.)

And of course there is the simple joy of planning and execution implemented in a manner more than professional. Nay, one might call the precision and near-miraculous luck of such actions positively _Egbertian_.

You must admit that he certainly has the background for it. The ECHE side of the family (as John likes to call the multitude of surnames contributing to his and Jade's genetic material) is much more commanding and public than the subtler agents whose genes were mixed to birth you and Dave.

But oddly enough, being under John's command makes you stretch your own wings. Not as a challenge to him, but in assistance. You really do think it's quite specific to John himself, a unique quirk of nature and nurture. His egalitarian acknowledgement of friendship combined with stalwart leadership is a fine line of duty few are called upon to walk. And you must admit you are often persuaded by his determination through cynicism.

That you imagine is also unique. Even the semi-secret conspiracy of the HTA has only worked with what it believes possible. 2(c)/Lieutenant/Commander/Captain/Fleet Captain John Egbert has often confessed his fears to you of things he believes beyond his control - the mood of collective humanity, the inherent destructive urges of the two known intelligent species - and yet in doing so, without even realizing it, he has been formulating desperate, impossible plans that will let him influence the very things he thinks beyond him.

All in all, risking what any objective person would rate as certain death is paying off quite well so far.

"Transition to realspace in three," you announce. Everyone on the command deck - and that's _everyone_ \- knows what that means. Detecting a ship coming out of the Furthest Ring is remarkably easy once you've grasped the technology, and the Empire has recently acquired their own version of the short range "skip" drive LtC. Zahhak cobbled together, Frankensteinian, from the gutted ruins of your elegant design, and used it to create short-range FTL missiles just as Earthfleet has.

In other words, once you leave the Furthest Ring, you will die.

Which is, of course, the plan.

**T+298b**  
want t0 hear a j0ke? y0u can't make time m0ve faster.

You can see how time is moving. You can tear it apart and pull it back together. But you can't change the relativistic time required to do _that_ , except in the Furthest Ring, where there is no time - and where, of course, you _can't_ be in order to make this work.

What that all means is that you have _abs0lutely n0 way_ to shorten, ease, or cut the amount of time you have to watch Dave suffer.

He is, after all, dying no less than you did. Another Aradia Megido, another John Egbert, another Rose Lalonde are on that other possible-ship dying, but it's the same Dave Strider there - the same Dave Strider _anchoring_ himself there, forcing that reality to remain despite his instinctive powers trying to jerk him back to prevent his death. And the same Dave Strider is also sitting across from you, his obsidian skin rippling with flowing cracks of sickly yellow-green light, suffering indescribably while you lace the two timelines together, while you drink of his blood and take of his power to let the rest of you live/not live.

John and Vriska are on the other side of the small meditation room, both pushing their own talents to exhaustion pushing probability and particles down both timestreams that Dave is channeling, to make everything work just like it should be. They're sweating, breathing heavily, John's nose bleeds, Vriska's horns are whitening.

But Dave is dying.

y0u aren't g0ing t0 l0se it 0ver this  
y0u've always kn0wn that every0ne dies  
that even y0u w0uld die

But then he refused to let you die…

what are y0u a tw0-sweep wriggler  
are y0u going to let fear c0me back and haunt you?  
or are you g0ing t0 d0 whatever it takes  
to get  
him  
back.

You **slam** the timelines together, stitch your own death and those of every other one of your friends on this ship into this reality where you're still alive. And you find the willpower (never hard, not normally, but for this?) to look up at him.  
His hands are still holding yours, resting on the cushioned bench. Cracks of green light ripple across his face, but they're fading, and a bright red glow from behind his visor overwhelms them. He slides it off slowly, and his eyes are crimson from edge to edge, almost like Terezi's, save for the strong black lines placing his irises and pupils in those oceanic orbs of blood.

"Ara."

"Dave?" Your voice is so weak, so… afraid. You were stronger than this. You were harder. You're weakening.

He slips his right hand out from your left, and slips his fingers around your horn, grips lightly. "Don't. You should fear. Losing what you love. Makes it all the more. Fucking precious." He leans forward, almost falling on your lap, but you yank him closer and rest his head on your shoulder. You're not even sure if he knows he's saying the rest. "And when it hurts so bad. You don't fucking run."

An unexpected hand on your shoulder turns your head. Captain Egbert - John - has a look of concern out of place on that ever-confident face. He closes his eyes for a moment. "Only Dave would get survivor's guilt when he really did die." He opens them again, and focuses those powerful eyes on yours, so potently you barely notice his grin. (You do notice Vriska behind him, and her look of honest concern, because it's jus so _strange_ , even when you know her "plot"). "He's probably gonna be a self-sacrificing martyrdom-seeking ass for a while, just so you know."

You find yourself grinning back. If John Egbert can be soft, so can you. And sure as Signless Christ, neither of you will be weak because of it.

 

 **T+299ab**  
okay, as planet views go, you don't think anything can ever really trump the first time you saw earth from space. But Alternia is sure making a go for it. Of course, you realize you're probably just looking at the planet so you can avoid looking at what everyone else is avoiding.

Then, because you grew out of curling in a ball on your bed and rocking back and forth whenever your world was shaken, a long time ago, you draw up the sensor records - both of them, integrated by computer a lot easier than reality was integrated by powers you've been calling upon without really understanding.

You watch an errant particle flow from Alternia's sun expose the emissions of the _Sovereign Slayer_ for a microsecond - long enough for a Predactor to spot, launch a probe, for the _SS_ to attempt a low-profile skip, to hit a freak spot in the irrational imaginary topography of the Furthest Ring, and appear, dive in for a long jump, and emerge into concentrated missile fire.

You watch yourself and every one of your friends die. All the way through, from external and internal feeds, normal speed. Just once. To feel responsible, but not to get stupid. You did this because it was the easy, _right_ way to do it. Because you had other options but they weren't right. You could have killed them because they would have killed you, because you're fighting for your homeworld no less than they're fighting for theirs. It would have been sane, human, and fair.

But it wouldn't have been aspirational. And what good is a story that doesn't inspire others to look for the better within?

"Take us down," you say, breaking the silence. Your skip, covered by the same particle flow that had/hadn't revealed you, slipped past distracted scouts and minorly malfunctioning systems. Now you're at the edge of Alternia's atmosphere. "Give me a hover pattern around here."

Your target coordinates, chosen before you evaded/died to the blockade, are in an empty, deep patch of the ocean, sea dwellers being a hell of a lot rarer, and nobody particularly in the mood to see what'd happened to their childhood hives.

It comes as a bit of a shock, then, when you skim over the waters quietly, preparing for your next step, and every single proximity alarm goes off, dozens of massive white tentacles rising from the depths with startling speed to snap around the _Sovereign Slayer_ and drag you under.

There's pretty much one agreed upon response to this:

OH FFFFFFFUUUUUUUCCCCCKKK!


	7. Internalities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave thinks things through. Really. You just haven't seen it yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE DOC SHOWS UP. PREPARE TO HIGHLIGHT SOME TEXT, SUCKERS!

## 3: Dave

 **2 hours, 11 minutes, 6 seconds post-mortem**  
Your teeth are clenched, your body pulsing with the thing inside you yearning to escape death, escape doom, run away run the fuck away dave just fucking do it run.

You kill that thought without mercy. Aradia could follow you. The rest of them? No. And you're already **dead** , you can feel your atoms falling apart just as much as you can feel her breath on your shoulder.

You stayed and watched them die. And you didn't escape. You died.

And you were _sent back_.

"Cut engines, take down the automatic defense fields."

"John, without fields-"

Egbert wheels on your sister and crosses his arms. "You, Equius, and AR made this ship, Rose. What pressure is it good to?"

"400 gigapascals will cause structural deformation within two hours." _Oh sure Rose, you_ only _built this thing to withstand the pressure of the Earth's molten core for over an hour_. Engineers. Lalondes. Seriously.

John leans back in his command chair. "We could kill or escape this thing, Rose. I'm not going to. For much the same reason we didn't blow up the Alternian fleet above us."

"Being consumed by a massive predator is an appropriate parallel to not committing mass murder?"

"Doctor." John has a commanding voice, but Equius has an overriding one. "That is a lusus." He has a tiny-ass cloth in his hand. Man, you thought John helped him with the sweat thing. "It is a very particular lusus."

John has the quirky family grin, the one he gets when his zig-zagging mind bounces around in front of the straight thinkers. "And it's the only one in your field, Rose."

She frowns for a moment, barely concealing the irritation that Egbert's gotten the better of her. "That would be-"

Equius interrupts her again, and not that you can particularly read him behind his shades (you approve), but he seems positively smug as his bass rumbles, "Gl'bgoyb, Emissary to the Horrorterrors." He coughs into one meaty hand, and adds with a little less certainty, "Although it had not expanded to this massive extension last I knew."

"Yo, can we get a headcount on biologists, xenophysiogists, amateur cryptozoologists, and monster maniacs?" you ask the room lazily, still leaning back into Aradia's shoulder massage.

Jade, Nepeta, Tavros, and Gamzee raise their hands. Rose raises an eyebrow, which counts for her. "Gamz, bro, did you actually know any of the words I was saying there?" You fucking love that putz but it is _really_ hard to tell when he's lucid and when he isn't now that he's got meds to keep his irrational phases from being murder phases.

"Yeah, bro, I'm all the motherfuckin' about like, monsters and shit."

"Question motherfucking withdrawn then," you reply, giving each other air fistbunps across the room. "John, that a good enough committee for you?"

"It'll do," your demi-bro/best friend/ex-boyfriend/boss/fraternal pantheonite (John can be Zeus, you figure you're pretty set up as Hades already) decides, dopey grin in full force. "Go ahead and consult, people, we're enjoying the ride until I say otherwise."

You lean back and lay your head on your matesprit's collarbone, staring up into her carnelian eyes. The command deck sounds absurdly quiet for a bit. The sound of tentacles and increasing water pressure doesn't even make it through the four layers of hull plating. And you've all stopped talking because there are a lot faster ways of communicating (well, except Karkat. When he gets agitated dude forgets the _sub_ vocalization part of his implants and just emits a modulating low-pitch slurred grumble. So, the way he normally talks, only slightly quieter).

Dave Strider  joined network  rampant speculation ahoy!

Dave Strider narrowband transmission link to  Rose Lalonde.

Dave Strider direct contact implant link to  Aradia Megido.

JE: let's start at the top! horrorterror. lusus. anybody got an idea why we have that combination?

Oh dammit, you guess you have to field this one. Time to check if your internal processors have been storing things from other possible timelines correctly.

Dave Strider has uploaded "crypticbabblingcueballasshole.vid"

>   
>  _ sorry was that a threat? _   
>  _I do not threaten._ I also do not subject myself to reformatting, whether or not I am present in a "flashback" capacity.   
> 

Omniscient semiomnipotent asshole.

> I do not really care about your opinion, Mr. Strider. The reason you are not dead is because it would be of no particular benefit to me to arrange the somewhat difficult series of events required to make you stay dead.  
>  _your client had some different thoughts_  
>  Peixes thinks incorrectly about multiple facts. I am not inclined to correct her.  
>  _on things like your master._  
>  Correct. Your perception is one of the qualities that makes the Megido line so useful in service.  
>  _motherfucker-_  
>  _dave! he wants this._  
>  I definitely do. Of course, you know that because you listened ahead, which I also wanted you to do, as I knew you would. You perceive time, Ms. Megido. I perceive everything. The literal definition of omniscience. I knew you would be here. I knew how to chain a Horrorterror to your world in order to madden your unsuitably pacified species. I knew what terrors Meenah Peixes would bring when given the chance at the throne of Imperial Condescension. I knew the war that would brew and erupt when the Grand Highblood's ship encountered your I.S.S. Genesis Tracker. I know how empty your little victories will seem when my master arrives.  
>  _heh heh  
>  heh  
> heh heh heh heh heh  
> you fucking _monologued _  
> im gonna try and kill you now  
>  but youre gonna _really _get your ass handed to you  
>  when you go up against john_  
> 

That gets the speculation brewing.

RL: That's impossible.  
TN: He did it, So it probably isn't, By the definition of the term, Impossible.  
EZ: =--= The Summoner Reborn is correct. But… what t001s could possibly hold such an e%tremely STRONG being?  
JH: rose you opened a breach to push into the furthest ring but what about taking something out?? :O  
RL: I suppose, if a power were capable of extracting a Horrorterror from the Furthest Ring, it would also be capable of restraining it here. I do not believe they can actually move, in our sense of the word.  
JE: then what exactly would you say is wrapped around my ship right now, rose?  
RL: It's very technical.  
VS: Hold the fuuuuuuuuck up for a minute. Horrorterrorrs make dayterrors? This fucking CUE8ALL is why we have to use sopor to even sleep???????  
VS: He's so fucking dead!!!!!!!!  
GM: yeah. THIS MOTHERFUCKING AIN'T GONNA STAND.  
KV: EVERYBODY SHUT THE FUCK UP AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE PART WHERE THE CREEPY AS FUCK BULGESACK IS APPARENTLY FUCKING OMNISCIENT. WHAT THE FUCK DO WE DO ABOUT THAT?  
JE: he villain monologues. thank you, dave. he. fucking. villain. monologues. i owe you so much for this.  
NL: :33 < oh boy oh man this is going to fucking ruuuule!!!  
NL: :33 < you just stepped into the egbert lure you dumbass supervillain-wannabe!!!  
EZ: =--= Nepeta, lang-.  
EZ: =--= Hrg. John. This being at least believes himself to be the creator of my species. I believe we e%amined what I would do in such a cir%umstance.  
JE: > you're fucking right we did.  
JE: > agenda: kill this fucker. current task: giant squiddly lusus-horrorterror. one step at a time people, let's kick ass!

You zone out, let them discuss plans. You have other things to put your brain on.

RL: How are you, Dave?  
DS: dead rose  
DS: im dead youre dead were all dead  
DS: want to see the recordings from my eyes? want to hear your last words?  
RL: Your skit is unimpressive, brother. I wouldn't suggest a career in acting.  
DS: im sane enough for this family rose  
DS: ill let you know if that changes  
RL: Please try not to be a machismo-fueled bundle of repression for any longer than you absolutely have to.  
DS: okay  
DS: …  
DS: shit  
DS: i just realized  
DS: i cant do goth  
DS: colors are entirely too inverted  
DS: guess i gotta go back to being suave as fuck  
DS: damn i was really looking forward to being angsty and sullen for six months  
RL: I do so appreciate your coping mechanisms.  
RL: I realize you would consider it death by mortification and thus be force to enable your powers to escape it, but if that were not the case I might be so moved as to hug you.  
DS: whoa lets not go overboard here  
DS: …  
DS: thanks rose  
RL: Any time.

DS: hey  
AM: hey yourself  
AM: having a fun ride?  
DS: youre pretty relaxed ara  
AM: should i not be?  
DS: i dunno  
DS: whole thing where this giant unreal motherfucker is the lusus of the heiress  
DS: the one that kills you off first if she starts getting hungry  
AM: dave.  
AM: i already died.  
AM: you brought me back.  
AM: i'm not going to disrespect your gift. 0u0.

" **Nothing can kill me that doesn't kill you and the universe besides.** "

Goddamn that woman can put the force of a hammer into a whisper.

DS: shit  
DS: guess i gotta cancel my plans of giving up  
DS: maybe start fighting like us red-bloods are supposed to  
AM: and hows that mr strider?

" **To the death and past that.** "

Of course, nobody had to teach you about bass lines.

You slip your fingers out from where they're entangled, and grip hands tightly instead. Manly Brotherhood Clasp, John would call it, except given the circumstances that's entirely wrong, so you're gonna go with Death Grip.

DS: death isn't even a boundary is it?

She smiles, sublime, wicked. Flat teeth, sharp eyes, and a mind that holds everything. Your lover (you can't call her your matesprit honestly. There's no room for pity in your feelings) knows what you mean.

AM: not to us. try not to rub it in.  
DS: its not something im going to bring up with just anyone trust me  
AM: i do.

You shift over to her side, still gripping her hand tightly. Yeah, you're not worried. This Emissary to the Horrorterrors? This speaker of the Vast Glub? It can be friendly, or it can face Dave Strider and Aradia Megido. That alone should be reason for fear.

JE: well people, interesting theorizing. rose, i'm inclined towards your hypothesis as to gl'bgoyb's origins but i have to peg jade and nepeta's suggestion for motivation as the most likely.  
JH: told you!! hidden princess, totally!  
NL: :33 < i really hope fefurry hasn't changed!!! or not for the worse at least :((  
EZ: =--= Agreed. I would find it 100% e%cusable if we did not have to fight here.  
JE: > ping on sonar. main body of our transport is approaching. and what have we here?  
RL: An underwater airtight facility, to provide the obvious response to your rhetorical question.  
KV: JOHN, GIVE ME VISUALS.  
JE: done and done. What are we looking for?  
KV: BINGO. THE THING'S PAINTED UP LIKE SOMEONE VOMITED RAINBOW SHERBERT. THAT'S FEFERI'S HOME.  
JE: hmm. and it looks like we're being invited in.

You also noticed the tentacles withdrawing and pushing your ship to the structure, even though you weren't paying attention. You had it shoved in front of you by the force you're always straining against, that well-meaning but slightly fucking cowardly quasi-automatic power that hurls you sideways in time to another possibility that isn't so deadly to yourself.

The weird thing is, getting released by a fucking Horrorterror's grasp and nudged up against an airlock to meet the last of the Alternian cohort, the ones that are probably on your side?

It just spiked your chance of death by an order of magnitude.


	8. Hierarch(y)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How many different choices would you have to make to like yourself?  
> And how many to hate?

You guess this is what it must be like for other people to see your family reunions - a chaotic scramble of violence, sibling rivalry, love, hate, peacemaking, and shocking revelations.

You just wish you weren't dragged into this one by your relationships.

Karkat appears to have finally taken control by raw bellowing power, having overcome his edge-of-tears silence at the initial meeting. John is standing back, unusually withdrawn. He's got as many connections to these people as you do, you figure, but he's not stepping up, which is - he's _John_ , that's what he _does_.

So you guess it's up to the grey-toned reality-warped bastard to represent humanity. Before Rose can, anyway. That's pretty vital. But you'd better get your own feelings under control first.

>   
>  _The airlock opens immediately into a gigantic chamber, which makes a kind of sense. Not like sea trolls care that much if the place floods._   
> 

>   
>  _There are four of them, standing (or floating) beneath a gigantic glass window into the deeps - pocked with circular seals through which a set of sinuous tentacles of the great fuckin' Emissary writhe._   
> 

>   
>  _One is Ampora, wearing the same armor you saw in the prison cams, something that almost looks too pompous to be functional, but isn't by any means. His eyes are sharp behind those completely out of place glasses, and they're locked on John. The ridiculously long blue gun is slung over his shoulder in a parade manner, but he has reach to it, and your mind tracks it as a threat. Just not the worst one._   
> 

>   
>  _A step ahead of him must be Feferi Peixes, Heir to the Throne of Alternia, who was supposed to challenge and be killed (because nobody has yet dethroned Her Imperi Condescension, who's ruled so long that apparently only asshole omnipotents with cueball heads know her name is Meenah Peixes) entire sweeps ago. Her armor is slightly slimmer than Ampora's, and glistens with the Furthest Ring-transit byproduct that coats all Earthfleet's ships. Dozens of rags, pennants, and sashes of different colors are draped over the armor - sort of grunge fashionable, the poverty power armor approach, maybe a little impractical but you wouldn't bet they're not designed to just disintegrate in a fight. She wears swim goggles that are only slightly less incongruous than Ampora's damn glasses, and is grinning widely. That would be more reassuring if her teeth didn't make sharks envious._   
> 

>   
> _Floating behind Ampora, and the source of Karkat's stunned quiet (punctuated by minor whimpers) is a skinny four-horned troll wearing jeans, boots, shades, and a t-shirt that says "programmers bring the honey" in Alternian. Aside from the floating, there are little micro-implosions occurring all around him, spheres of darkness coalescing out of the air and collapsing until they explode as motes of light. Judging by the way he's also holding_ her _attention, this is your fucking former competition. Sollux Captor. You table the motion on whether to hate this fucker, because there's bigger questions at stake._  
> 

>   
>  _Like Terezi Pyrope. Who is behind Peixes, almost hidden, looking skinny and small like you never thought she was. She wears a Legislacerator suit, marked with her own sign, and she's looking away from everyone, leaning on a long, straight black metal cane. "Looking", you think, but you can tell she's trying to avoid any kind of sensory perception. Small lightnings crackle around her head, lifting her hair in areas._   
> 

And now Serket's slugging Ampora's armor and laughing, Maryam is hate-snogging Peixes (you had no idea they were a thing - something about survival of the species vs resisting tyranny at all cost is what you hear between angry liplocks) - is your sister seriously taking notes on this? Yes, yes she fucking is - Karkat is embracing Captor while Aradia pointedly stands next to you, and you're staring at Terezi and waiting for her to _fucking acknowledge your presence_.

You stew. You boil. And you realize in a sudden moment of clarity that you don't even hate her.

You did. You really did. But then she went and actually got what was coming to her. The fuck are you supposed to hate after that?

Fuck it. Dave Strider don't hide.

"'sup TZ?"

"Dave Strider." Her voice has all its cackling confidence for a moment, then it cracks. "Are you human now, Dave?"

"I'm whatever you are, I think," you drawl. "Being a conduit to the unknowable beyond is more of a distinction than your species is."

"Maybe. I had heard you were alive, Aradia."

Aradia laughs, and you smirk. "Not an easy question, Pyrope. But I am healthy. Whole. Young."

"Yes. You've gained much in service to the humans."

Aradia doesn't rise to the half-hearted bait. "You talk about service and duty, Terezi. I've never met them. I don't serve anyone. But I'll gladly work alongside any kin of Dave's. Do you have anyone who'll say the same for you?"

"Justice demands superiors and inferiors, and obedience to the law."

" _FUCK THAT_." Goddamn, who's so pissed about - oh shit, it's you. Well, fair enough. You've wanted to say this for months. "Justice demands _empathy_ , TZ. That's why you can't find it in the Empire. That's why you have so many contradictions tearing you apart. That's why you're so empty inside."

"Empty?" The crackling halo of electricity around her head sparks and surges. "I am a god, Strider."

"Join the club. Did it solve things for you?"

After what feels like an eternal pause, Pyrope lowers her head. "No."

Fuck. You can handle fighting her, but this needs construction. Who - duh.

You reach out, rewrite time in the mildest shift, and drag Karkat over. "Karks. Need your famous leadership here."

"GogDAMN it, Strider, have you got any fucking idea how much that fucks with my think-pan- oh. Hey, Rezi. Looking different."

She doesn't have a quip for him. Not even "Karkles". Damn, this is sad. You might have to look away.

Nope, can't. You've got one hell of a schadenfreude addiction buddy-

Aradia Megido  narrowband transmission to  Dave Strider  
AM: p0pcorn?

-but at least you're in good company.

And resumption of normal Karkattery in three, two, one…

"Oh, quit fucking moping. What the fuck are you now anyway, Rezi?"

"The Force of Mind." Her mind-lightning crackles and jumps, spinning through the air and curling around Karkat.

You're sure he'd be pissed if he wasn't getting constantly tossed around by gusts of air and dragged sideways through time. You guys will never stop fucking with each other. Even once you've become godlike entities.

"Step up from "the condemned", still a whole flight of steps down from "Terezi Pyrope"," he says, arms crossed but voice absurdly controlled (for Karkat). "Let me try and name all the powers that title came with. The power to have friends. The power to feel sane and safe. The power to know right from wrong. Are you still packing any of those?"

Damn. You're… _just so proud_. You want to take vids and share them with Rose, as the proud parents of a fully mature sense of biting wit that you've been nurturing in your l'il mutant buddy for so long.

Terezi scowls, and Karkat steps forward, grabs her face roughly, and bites her lip. "You can't go back. _None_ of us can go back. I hate you for that. But I hate you most for not moving forward."

DS: yeah i surrender  
DS: i can't compete with that kind of hatred  
AM: that's 0kay  
AM: youre very good at the 0ther type of r0mance  
AM: 0u0  
DS: yeah that still looks silly  
DS: never stop doing it  
DS: <3  
AM: <3

Karkat and Terezi have been whispering some more. You could review the autologs your implants would have made, but meh. You think this caliginous infidelity triangle has hit the right time to fall apart. Karkat lifts Terezi's head from his chest by yanking her hair, and gives her a last growled, "Get better. Judge better. And remember you have friends. Or I'll kick your ass 'till you do, Rezi."

"PANTHEON." Ampora's voice is amped and acoustically corrected by a not too shabby speaker system. "We must speak of what comes next. Of how our divine power is to be used, and what we shall do to throw down the usurper called the Condesce."

There is a silence, those of you with _powers beyond mortal ken_ sort of drifting through your - well - _mortal_ friends and family towards Ampora, without anyone really talking about it.

John stands closest to him, a match in height for the troll even in armor, although his horns give Eridan the final edge. You wait for him to talk. Even if half of you are trolls, John speaks for you all.

John pulls his right elbow back. Cocks his wrist. Closes his hand.

And slams Ampora square in the face with a right hook from a 110 kg soldier.

The troll, armor and all, is thrown on his ass.

"We aren't gods, we aren't lords, and we aren't doing things your way, you smug bulge-licking son of a bitch."

The silence of stupor holds sway while Eridan pushes to his feet, steadies himself, and slashes John's face, claws first.

John concentrates and the blood streaking his cheek clots, turning thick and black, hardening on his face. His lips are pulled back in a - what the fuck, _John Egbert_ is snarling.

"Oh no, we are NOT breaking this up because you two can't get along!" Peixes interrupts, sounding manic and half-insane - but the attention-demanding kind of insane.

"No. We're not." John is still, rippling with readiness flickering across his body in waves of tensing muscles.

He jerks forward, grabs Ampora's armored collar with his left hand, and yanks the sea-troll forward until their mouths meet.

Fangs or no fangs, John comes away with lips smeared with more purple than crimson. "But we're doing things my way, and I'll kick anyone's ass - _platonically_ \- if there's disagreement. Alright?"

Ampora wipes his lips with the back of his hands, but you know that hunger in his eyes. You've _been_ that hunger. He nods. He'll do anything for John now.

You glance through your shades, getting a panopticon of the room. Hell, you'll _all_ do anything for John, for your own reasons. Even if Serket is muttering, _"You're gogdamned lucky we're flushed right now, John."_

"It's Gl'bgoyb, isn't it?" John asks, casual tone, hard eyes. "Cueball's prisoner. The Horrorterrors' lost lamb. And she has access to a fragment of the old universe."

"There's a realm between," Ampora says, his tone striving for disdain but managing only a mix with desire.

"The demon's dimension," John nods in agreement. "So the Emissary has a conduit to a fragment there."

"Y-yeah. They just have to… embrace her," Ampora manages.

Someone finds his voice. "FUCK NO." Karkat slashes his hands in an X in the air. "I'm out, fuck that, I'll spend a couple trillion years combing the galaxy for another fragment."

"I, hrm, think we have to try it, Karkat," Nitram says. Well, Striders teach subtlety, but you're glad to see the kid knows you need a spine too.

"Yeah. If it motherfucking helps we should motherfucking do it."

"I feel it is incumbent upon us to at least explore the possibility for the sake of our long-term goals, Karkat," Maryam suggests, hand light on his shoulder.

He throws up his arms. "If you all want to be empty think-pan morons then go right ahead and jump into the gogdamned thing's maw, but I'm saner than that."

"That's a joke, KK," Captor argues, floating a bit above his buddy.

"Shut the fuck up, Sollux."

You could speak up now. You could mention how you look now, what whispers in your dreams, how you feel when you use this power.

Or not. It's their fucking decision.

 

Only three of the six trolls with you approach the Emissary, and neither human - really, Rose? Woulda thought she'd be _allll_ over this, like the proverbial bitches are all over you. Karkat sticks to his guns, and John's bro-pals stay at his side.

The first tentacle wraps around Gamzee, and in an acid green flash he vanishes. A moment later, Tavros follows. The third tentacle approaches Kanaya, worms around her… then pulls back.

Rose walks to her and takes her hand. You hear something appropriately soothing muttered, and Kanaya follows Rose back to the rest of you.

Karkat is angrily fingering his blade, but John has a hand on his arm while you wait. And in a flash, they return.

Tavros is swept by wind, alit upon it like a knight upon his mount, his buffeting shields meeting something of John's halfway across the room and disintegrating from complex but orderly patterns into pure chaos.

Bulges and a deep indigo-red glow ripple under Gamzee's skin, and motherfucker looks like the motherfucking Hulk for a sec when he stands, until his body sort of slumps into his usual gangly hunch and he gives you that ridiculously pitiful relaxed, dopey grin.

John whispers something to himself, though you catch it - actually, everyone might, knowing John. "Knight of Breath. Skin of Rage."

"Two more join our strength," Eridan proclaims, having mustered his stability in the wake of Hurricane John.

"We're not done yet," John declares, mote of fire in his eye, in his grin. "Heiress. Can we leave or is your lusus going to get pissed off?"

"I'm the Seer of Life," Peixes declares. "I knew this was coming, knew you were coming! We stocked up on the traitors, the cruel, and the evil. She'll be full for a long long time!"

Holy fuck have you mentioned this chick looks even more like a shark than Terezi. It's the fins. You listen to Freaked-Out Ape Brain, who says _look inedible, motherfucker!_ It really, really doesn't help that you can feel Ara's nerves through temporal vibrations. At least this one's on your side. You can deal with having scary motherfuckers for allies. You're fucking two people that fall under that category, for starters. And you guess you might fit under that tent too.

"Alright. Welcome to my ship," John says with a hint of dopey grin, letting you know _how long_ he's been wanting to say that. "We launch for an unknown planet on the other side of the galaxy in half an hour."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was going to be serious plot advancement this chalter, I swear! But then I started writing character interaction, and it just took me over. So much for my twelve-step fanfic recovery program.
> 
> Damn, I already had the John/Eridan tag on here? Well, regardless, bam: first caliginous John/Eridan I can remeber seeing. I was trying to figure out what to do with him and I realized, if you're generous, he's basically a more annoying Dave. Troll War John would _loathe_ a non-self-aware Dave. That and I just seem to love me some caliginous infidelity/threesomes.
> 
> Feferi <3< Kanaya, however, I will fully attribute to childishGambino's fantastic story Herding Cats, even if I do have their motivations for hatred slightly different due to _reasons_.


	9. Theodicy I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.  
>  \- Troll Barack Obama_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> A view inside the Serketry, while much discussion ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The old chapter 9 was shitty and too _in media res_. It has been slain by my hand, and will be cannibalized by the new chapters 9 and 10!

## 4: Vriska

**1 Terran Year, 82 Days/0.57 Sweeps into the Last War of the Empire**

You're going to intentionally land instead of accidentally crashing. That gives John one up on your last quest for godhood. Plus, you're actually _looking_ for it this time.

This planet still bites.

[Command Net]  
VS: This plan8 8ites.  
KV: THANK YOU, MOST INSIGHTFUL OF UNTRUSTWORTHY MILITARY ANALYSTS, WE HADN'T FUCKING NOTICED.  
EA: wwasn't this supposed to be a rogue planet? wwhat kinda rogue has a star?  
JE: inversions. pulsar's orbiting the planet. which is realistically too large for a solid-crust world anyway. no star vs planet-bound star.  
KV: AND IT HAPPENS TO BE BRIGHT AS FUCK. I'M SURE THIS TINY DETAIL JUST ACCIDENTALLY SLIPPED YOUR MIND, JOHN, BUT TROLLS ARE NOT MADE FOR LUMINOUS ZONES, AND AS YOUR "GIRLFRIEND" SO ELOQUENTLY EXPLAINED, WE'RE GOING TO BE WANDERING AROUND COMPLETELY INSENSATE ON THIS ROCK, LIKE MALE HUMANS KICKED IN THE SHAME GLOBES.  
JE: we have sun blindness too karkat, a world filled with white sand under a white pulsar isn't going to be fun for humans to see on either.  
JE: that is why we have tech. are all your teams ready?  
KV: READY FOR WHAT? WE ARE APPARENTLY SEARCHING AN ENTIRE PLANET THAT IS COVERED IN A CHEMICAL HAZE WHICH HATES ANY KIND OF PROBE WE SEND IN, FOR A THING YOU AND SERKET CAN ONLY BARELY DESCRIBE.  
JE: it'll turn up. we just have to be looking.  
KV: FUCK! TELL ME THIS IS NOT MORE OF YOUR OBSESSION WITH NARRATIVE CONVENTION, JOHN. LIFE IS NOT A STORY! WE COULD BE SEARCHING THIS WASTE CHUTE OF A PLANET UNTIL EVEN "FINS" HAS DIED OF OLD AGE.  
JE: this has rules, karkat. i can't make you see them if you're unwilling.  
VS: Jegus! Forget your o8sessive whining, Vantas, let's get down there and actually see what there is!  
EA: i gotta go wwith vvris, kar. wwe gotta at least fuckin get to the planet.  
JE: we'll know what to do, karkat. we just have to see the next step.  
KV: YOUR ABSURD, JESUS FUCKING SUFFERER NEARLY OFFENSIVE AMOUNTS OF LUCK ARE THE ONLY REASON I'M AGREEING TO THIS, JOHN.  
JE: that's fine. as long as you agree.

You would have had a lot to say about who really has the luck around here, but it doesn't work with the New Plan. You let Vantas have his little victory.

You're on the bridge for the landing, with your Cobalt Team, and John and his Blue Team. Karkat's Crimson Team and Eridan's Violet Team are already in the rear bay, fully armored and ready to move as soon as you drop the bay doors.

"Three minutes to atmospheric insertion," Lalonde announces. Ugh. You can practically hear your moirail telling you to call her Rose. _Fine, Fussyfangs. Just for you._

"What's our… plan?" New Plan or not, you still have to consciously make yourself think of Tavros as reliable. Even if the wind curls itself around him as much as it does around John, constant proof that he's at least at the same power level as you.

"Kanaya, medical ready?"

"I certainly hope so Vriska." Your moirail is suited up, her armor an only vaguely troll-shaped silhouette, covered in bulbous pods carrying equipment.

[Cerulean Net]  
VS: We're going to deploy 8etween 8lue and Crimson, hard and fast.  
VS: Try any smart comment8ry and I'll 8eat you to it, Lalonde.  
TN: Is there anything… To really worry… Us?  
KM: Not To Be Impolite Tavros  
KM: But Believe My Experience Permits Me To Respond As Karkat Would And Say  
KM: Sweet Fucking Signless Christ Yes  
RL: You have seen the footage from Losat, have you not, Junior Fleetleader?  
KM: Are We Calling The First Rogue Planet Losat Now  
KM: Also  
KM: Why  
VS: 8ecause it was the Land of Shade and Treasure, Kanaya, duh!!!!!!!!  
RL: One might also make the case for a Longitudinal Orbit galactic SATellite, but I will bow to your expertise, Commander.  
VS: John helped name it too, you know!  
RL: I suppose I will have to indulge his obsession with proper narrative nomenclature, then. At least for now.  
TN: Not that you're not… Totally engaging, but… Can we get back to my question? You weren't armored and… You weren't a God… Vriska.  
VS: I'm not a god now, Tavros, Jegus!!!!!!!!  
VS: Eridan's stupid 8ullshit isn't part of this team, ok8y? Let's get that straight at the 8eginning!  
TN: … Right. But… You know we're definitely more… Powerful. Alone and as… A whole.  
VS: Power isn't everything!  
VS: See my pre-emptive shut up from our last six conversations, Lalonde!!!!!!!!  
VS: I have a huuuuuuuuge appreci8tion for skill, finesse, and sheer 8rilliance on the tactical and strategic levels!  
RL: My sincerest apologies if I implied otherwise, Vriska. Two of the people I trust most have significant faith in your abilities, and I believe them.  
VS: Glad that's settled.  
VS: (For now.)  
RL: (For now. Hrm.)  
VS: Yeah, I saw that coming!!!!!!!! 8elieve me, Rose, I already got a good h8 thing going on with Aradia and I don't have anything ag8nst Zahhak to want to comp8 with him, so just shut-

"Incoming!" Leijon shouts from the front of the bridge, covering piloting/signals. She and the rest of Blue Team had been just as verbally quiet as Cobalt Team, but you guess this means business. (Fuck. Yes.) "Two contacts, 45 m/s2 acceleration, probably chemical propulsion missiles."

John smirks, and says something so quiet you have to strain to hear it. "Really? Second take then, _auteur_." He cranks up his volume for his orders, but doesn't even activate his chair's safety fields, just leans back and arches his fingers. "Maneuver and fire as needed."

Harley barely lets the words leave his mouth before she has the guns spewing. Simple plasma bursts in magnetic bubbles envelop the missiles, detonating them kilometers away from the ship in pale, bright white explosions you can barely even distinguish on the visuals.

Nepeta looks dismayed at not getting to dodge them, and perks up when she can announce, "Another ten contacts!"

"Repeat orders. Isolate and slag the firing site."

The ship's main engines crank up and maneuvering thrusters twitch, but somehow there's enough confidence in the shared consensus that everyone except Nepeta and Jade goes back to their communication networks.

[Command Net]  
KV: JOHN, DID THE FUCKING EMPIRE SOMEHOW HAUL ITS DECREPIT CLUELESS ASS ALL THE WAY OVER HERE BEFORE US?  
JE: bet anything against it. it's the native mobs.  
VS: The last mo8s didn't have missiles, John!!!!!!!!  
JE: which is why these do, vriska. mirroring.  
KV: AUUUGHHH. JOHN JUST TELL ME WHAT TO FUCKING DO I PROMISE THERE WILL BE NO COMPLAINTS AS LONG AS YOU **STOP FUCKING  BABBLING ABOUT MIRRORED SYMMETRY**.  
JE: plan is the same. resistance was expected. now you all know what it looks like. find patterns in enemy deployments. find what they're guarding most and we have our powerup.  
JE: any problems with my strategy?  
EA: besides you bein a wweak-ass coward wwho's gonna flinch wwhen it comes to the crunch?  
EA: there's your aquatic expandin and contractin bladder-based vvascular system-breakinly stupid team assignments.  
EA: wwhat's the point of my team bein all godheads anywway? wwhen wwe find the ascender before you it ain't gonna be a bit useful to us.  
JE: your team is the people you brought in because i don't have time to vet them and see how much your dumbass ideas have infected them, fuckass. if you find the objective you call it in.  
EA: fine, wwhatevver. your gonna end up losin evveryone of your mortals, fleet captain. at least kar's smart enough to get all gods wwatching him.  
KV: OH GET PAILED BY AN IRATE MUSCLEBEAST ALREADY AMPORA. WHATEVER THE FUCK BEING "HEIR OF HOPE" MEANS, I'M STILL TWELVE TIMES THE GUERRILLA FIGHTER YOU ARE.  
EA: c'mon kar you knoww i'd just hate to see you die as a mortal wwhen you're betta than that.  
JE: none of ours are dying, eridan. i don't intend to let them.  
VS: Missiles. Ground-8ased defenses. Armed native inha8itants. Will you 8OYS shut the fuck up and get 8ack on track!!!!!!!!  
JE: sorry. you're right. crimson, violet, prep to deploy within the next five minutes. cerulean, you're out the door no more than two minutes after them. you have your zones, report anything you think you should.  
JE: thanks for keeping me focused, vriska. <3  
VS: <33333333\. Idiot.

Like fuck are you going to let him fight with Eridan when he's in the same damn room as you. You need to get John back in both quadrants. Black with Ampora? Stupid and useless, you could have told him that a long-ass time ago. You did, in fact. He was just stupidly cheery and charming while he disarmed your concerns. Lousy fucking supportive boyfriend.

"Tracer fire, physical projectiles, multiple sources!" Nepeta growls.

"I have identified the weapons as high-velocity chainguns. They do not possess a fragment of the kinetic energy necessary to scratch our armor," Equius rumbles.

John leans forward, fingers laced, eyes narrowed. "Still seems like somebody doesn't want us here. Equius, threat assessment, species level."

Your giant ex-neighbor locks up, stunned for a sec. "I, hrm, please understand this is only my immediate impression, hrm, and completely lacking in evidence-"

John laughs, a genuine laugh. You can tell fake humor, mean humor, ugly humor. John's surprisingly good with them, but this is his preferred version: honest, shared humor. "Eq, buddy, moirail, I'm not crazy! I'm asking you to assess an entire civilization's threat capability based on the observed results of two weapons. Just guess."

"Nuclear age. Standard armaments potentially fatal to unarmored, unaugmented personnel. Use of nuclear weapons at point-blank range on armored personnel poses medium to significant risk depending on yield. No risk to _Sovereign Slayer_."

"Thanks." John's smile morphs, losing a little honesty, a little cheer, gaining a little cruelty, a little sadism. As much as you'd love to take credit for that, you've actually been trying to push him _away_ from this attitude, from this not-John weird/ugly/nerve-twitching _sneer_. Now you're pissed. What kind of useless exo-quadrant relationship is an Earth boyfriend if he doesn't listen to what you tell him to do, even if you tell him with subtle suggestions while having xenophiliac weird alien sex?

You'll just have to kick, punch, and/or claw goodness back into John Egbert.

"Landing site at these coordinates. Crimson and Violet will airdrop fifty meters up and take out any active hostile sites. Cerulean deploys when we're on the ground, and Blue locks the doors when we leave." John stands, and a thin whine fills the bridge as components in his arm slide and shift around into new configurations. "We go to war."

All of your objectives are fucked up. All of them.

Ugh. You have _so much_ mandatory scheming ahead of you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eridan's quirk may be off, I'm going from memory. Will adjust once I'm at my desktop.


	10. Theodicy II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I must've dreamed a thousand dreams  
>  Been haunted by a million screams  
> But I can hear the marching feet  
> They're moving into the street._  
> \- renowned poet, Troll Richard Nixon.
> 
> When Vriska exorcised her inner demons, she wasn't just trying to make them _outer_ demons.

_This is why you can't have nice things._

You wish there was someone you could tell to shut the fuck up for saying that shit. Unfortunately, that's your own mind talking to you. And you've been getting a lot worse at ignoring your own better judgement.

You pop over the ridge and hold to the trigger, arm extended, pistol straight, but nothing more than a pretense of aim. You empty the fifty-round clip of your automatic and you're casually, perfectly certain you made fifty hits.

It's just a pity there's five thousand of them out there.

And that not everyone's as good as you.

You kick Tavros's headless corpse… semi-headless, anyway. It's just the _center_ of his skull that's turned into brown pulp, after all, his ridiculous horns are still jutting out the sides of his hollowed head.

"Told you to put your helmet on, dumbass." You can't keep a sliver of fondness out of your voice, or a sliver of guilt out of your mind. _You could have done this sweeps ago. When you thought you were helping. And he wouldn't have come back._

"And gogdamn, are you taking your time or what?"

You pull a grenade off the self-replicating pod at your belt, slide the variable payload lever to full, and toss it backhand, slumping against the walls of the trench next to Tavros's corpse. The roar of only-barely-sub-kiloton detonation is muted by your armor, fully encased _unlike certain idiots_.

What looked like canals from orbit are trenches. War trenches. The absurdly-old-period-drama kind (John says humans had wars in these less than five hundred years ago. Sometimes it's even hard for you to tell when he's pulling a fast one). Concrete walls, bunker complexes, underground tunnels. Constant, endless fighting. Which doesn't make much gogdamn sense, because every single native looks exactly the same - round-headed white-carapaced trolloids that barely reach Karkat's height, packing all kinds of ancient weaponry that's only a concern because there is so. Damn. Much. Of it.

And because certain morons can't be safe if it kills them. Oh, wait, _it did_.

"Auuuuuuugh! Hurry up and come back to life so I can stop being so irrational, idiot!"

The coruscating energies rippling across your visible spectrum and beyond pick that moment to answer you, jumping over your without-a-doubt stupidest ~~only~~ friend. When they pass, he pushes himself up. There is a faint brown splatter on the floor, looking like it was baked into the cement perigees ago.

The worst part, you decide, dragging him against the wall by the collar while you reach over, grab the 88mm shell that just landed, make sure its proximity trigger continues to malfunction, and hurl it back in a flawless parabola, your suit-augmented muscles giving it almost the velocity that the native artillery did, listening for the explosion and the screams- okay, you got a bit sidetracked there.

The worst part is, you feel entirely at home here in a way you haven't once felt on the _SS_ , Earth, or in John's apartment.

Here your instincts scream for attention, and you're starting to think you should obey them.

[Cerulean Net]  
RL: Team Leader, I fondly hope this is going to take less time than most major land wars.  
RL: However amusing it might be to see a regiment stalled and crushed by four people.  
VS: Lalonde! Gog! I said I wouldn't h8 you, 8ut stop saying stuff I totally agree with or we'll have to 8e friends or something. Ugh.  
RL: You're not in agreement with our current goals?

You pop up, spray another automatic burst - this one a bit up, luck-twisting the universe to _not_ hit, but forcing the approaching infantry to drop to a crawl - and respond while you're still waiting for Tavros to wake his post-resurrection ass up. Jegus. You never took this long when YOU died.

VS: Duh!  
VS: I guess it's impossi8le in everyone's mind that I might have CHANGED or something since I was six gogdamn sweeps old, 8ut I don't actually LIKE seeing my 8oyfriend act like a gogdamn Imperial Threshecutioner!!!!!!!!  
VS: And I'm not planning to 8e one myself either.  
VS: Ugh.  
VS: Fuck.  
VS: Tavros are you alive yet or what, you giant wriggler?   
TN: I'm… Recovering, Vriska.   
VS: Pfffffffft. When I died my first time I was sta88ing demons within eight seconds.   
TN: You're not… Helping… By prodding my… Shame globes… With your boot.   
KM: Vriska   
VS: Fiiiiiiiine. 8ut seriously hurry up, I neeeeeeeed you to lusus-sit these two.   
KM: Excuse Me  
KM: Setting Aside The Implications That We Are Not Capable Adults  
KM: What Do You Need To Do That Requires You To Leave   
VS: I meant that someone with the a8ility to die and come 8ack should 8e here to t8ke one for the team to keep you two alive, Kanaya! I was just calling it lusus-sitting to mock Tavros and score human irony points.   
KM: Oh  
KM: Human Irony Points Remain Confusing  
KM: Im Not Even Sure What My Score Is  
KM: Regardless We Are Soldiers  
KM: Well I Am A Soldier And Rose Is A Secret Agent  
KM: Although Not Necessarily A Field Agent  
KM: I Believe She Has Passed The Necessary Certifications But I May Be Mistaken   
RL: Kanaya, dear. Rambling.   
VS: Fussyfangs. Chill!   
KM: Sorry   
RL: At any rate, I agree with Commander Serket.   
VS: W8, what?   
KM: You Do   
RL: I consider myself as much soldier as scientist, yes. That is precisely why I would like to have one of our theoretically immortal supernormal associates with us. Rejecting a powerful asset for the sake of honor has been rather _gauche_ for about a millennia in human military circles.   
VS: ........ Lalonde, I think this is the beginning of a beautifully disgusting friendship.   
KM: Youre Quoting Troll Peter Lorre Now  
KM: You Need To Watch More Vids Not Recommended By John Or Karkat   
VS: Oh shush, Fussyfangs. Lalonde, you're in charge until I get 8ack.   
TN: Vriska, I am the… Highest ranking and kind of only other… Godhead here.   
VS: Tavros! If I didn't need you to 8e a knight and protect people right now I would 8e sta88ing you to death! For the last time, we are not 8uying into any of Eridan's moronic 8eliefs a8out "gods" on this team!!!!!!!!   
KM: Tavros It Really Is An Offensive Viewpoint   
TN: Kanaya, you're only mortal… Right now. We know you have the… Godhead potential, you're…One of us.   
KM: This Is What Im Talking About  
KM: There Are An Extraordinary Number Of Humans And Trolls Who Are Not One Of Us  
KM: But They Are Good People  
KM: In Some Cases Better Than Some Of Us  
KM: And We Are Not Their Gods  
KM: Nor Should We Pretend To Be  
KM: Tavros  
KM: Are You There   
VS: Sorry, Fussyfangs. He'll answer once he gets over the concussion he was asking for.  
VS: ANYWAY.  
VS: Gogdamn we argue a8out everything, don't we?   
RL: Yes.   
KM: Yes  
KM: Except The Fact That We Argue About Everything   
VS: I'm going to John. I'm going to talk to him politely. Then I'm going to kick his teeth in and pull the adorka8le hero out of that ugly-ass murderer suit.  
VS: I may put my 8oot up Eridan's w8ste chute on the w8y if he has anything to do with this!!!!!!!!   
RL: Commander Serket, as a close childhood friend of John's, I have only this to say:  
RL: Good luck.

You vault the next bunker with ease, leaving Tavros in the trench to come out of his daze. Your Violent Response Armor (Middleweight) is painted with cobalt webbing in shield-like formations, but that's the only thing distinguishing you from any other Earthfleet line troll in armor. You hit the top of the concrete, send out a line of fractures, and leap again, full power.

You crash onto the deck of a hover-battleship, the heaviest thing the white-carapaced armies have brought out so far, but it feels almost toylike for some reason. Maybe it's just the scale difference.

Carapace soldiers fire on you, reflected projectiles and lasers doing more damage to their ship than you are. You stomp across it towards the conning tower, then put [ToggleWeapon ID#(RNG 8-64)] a  [#38] blade-shaped electromagnetic decoupling field into the body of the ship, hearing electronics crunch. The entire ship trembles and lurches, one engine on overdrive, another cutting out. Carapace crew start diving for it, most of them landing relatively intact in the sands below.

The battleship starts to list forward, and you jam [ToggleWeapon ID#(RNG 8-64)] a [#11]titanium-alloy staff back into the ship's innards. The rear engines roar past their safeties, and the ship rockets forward, like an obscenely large hoverboard.

38 km through the blinding haze of sand and mist towards a kilometer-wide raging tornado with a murderous bulgebiter who's really just a soft-hearted adventure-seeker with responsibility issues. You have to keep up the luck long enough to crash this thing next to him and convince him to come back to sanity, come back to you, come back to being _JOHN_.

Gogdammit, Plan: Be A Mature, Responsible Adult _fucking sucks_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess the chapters of the Book of Vriska are going to be short. Meh. Means more frequent updates. Post post post. Go to statistics user page. Refresh refresh refresh. Feel pageviews count fill hole in soul.


	11. Theodicy III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Like soldiers in the winter's night  
>  With a vow to defend  
> No retreat, baby, no surrender_  
> \- Last words of famed general Troll George Armstrong Custer.
> 
> She realized then that the little voice in her head would never be silent, no matter how she throttled it. And she lived with that knowledge for entire sweeps, until the night that voice was the only thing left unbroken.

He would probably make this easier if he knew it was you coming to see him. If you just got on the comm net - it's all right there, only a single mental command and then a sentence or two.

Probably. If he doesn't, you will know something is very, very wrong.

Well fuck, you already knew _that_. And you don't need the demoralization of having it confirmed that things are worse than you feared.

You continue in silence.

Metaphorical silence, anyway. The actual combination of sputtering hover-battleship turbines, raging whirlwind on a world covered in sand, and pitched battle isn't very quiet when it comes to literal sound.

You feel the lance a moment before it comes into view, and you bend luck, letting the impossibly intact engines cut out for a moment to drop your improv ride below the spike of shearing wind-launched sand.

_John, you **better** not have fucking known that was me._

If you signal, and he doesn't let you in, your relationship's in trouble. If he intentionally tries to kill you - well, he'd better have dumped Eridan's skinny non-ass and flipped quadrants with you, or John Egbert is going to have a veeeeeeeery **messy** resurrection.

Of course, this all assumes you survive the next two spikes you feel inbound, while you're recharging the ridiculous probability that the turbines will reboot to 130% power.

Up, right, glancing blow, minor damage, shuddering frame, maglock boots, spend more luck, force it together. Howling steel, shattering plastics, sparking conduits.

_A challenge?_

You make a single notch in his favor. Knowing or not. At least he's treating you like you're dangerous.

You collapse one of the spikes, forcing the universe to remember John's impossible power is _impossible_ , then pitch upward, take the hit on the under-armor.

The ridiculously small battleship - eight meters long, a crew of what, sixteen? - rattles and sounds thunderous cracks even over the tumult, but the remnants of the windswept sand-bore punch through a few meters from you, spraying into the air.

This time it's four spikes, from three different angles, both a horizontal and vertical spread.

 _Still some of_ you _in there, John. Good boy. Best rival._

Collide.

Deflect.

Unweave.

Suffer.

You take the last shot - the dead-on narrow, concentrated one hiding in the wake of the fat bore - on your armor. Accelerated to ferocious speeds, the sand grinds across your ViRA-M.

[Preprogrammed Diagnostic Alert: Damage sustained. Your filigree and outer paint layer may need repair in the near future.]

You're going to get mud on his big blue-shelled ass for this.

And you're through. The fore of the battleship crashes out of the sandstorm and into its eye.

Marching across sand-splattered concrete, a bright blue giant holds both arms out, controlling the havoc with an order that only fuels more chaos. Olive, navy blue, and jade suits follow in his wake, but they're just staying out of the way.

You crash. The turbines all die at the same time, but a few remnants of power flare to straighten your downward arc, and the battleship - however small, still several tons of metal and plastics - hits the ground, sprays sand, bounces, hits again, slides forward.

You jump. 210 kg alone (heavier than anyone but Equius, Feferi, and Aradia), 455 kg in the suit.

But balance, and waves, and force - these are all luck as well.

And if you're willing to believe one soon-to-be-chastised boyfriend's theories, riding down a wave of sand to land ten meters from him is so gogdamn awesome that the Narrative has to allow it.

You work up your will, focus your demand, and prepare to fire a Karkat's worth of verbal barrage at John.

Underground positions burst open, and carapace troopers rush forward, firing automatic rifles madly.

The sand column parts for a sixteen meter tall armored behemoth, almost an armored human in shape, crowned, carrying at least as many cannons as the battleship.

Carpace riders on swift fangbeast-like mounts, more like one being than two, like spiky, armed versions of Equius's goofy lusus, thunder through the sands, many raw and bleeding, screaming agony and rage through two mouths.

_There is **never** a good moment to just discuss things! Gogdamn dark side of the Narrative._

John's reaction is instant, and you start to piece things together. At one arm's direction, a dozen lines of air burrow into the sands and leap up as explosive spikes among the centaur riders. His left arm gathers the wind in, forming a massive vortex that distorts the "safety" of the eye of the storm.

The moving castle fires. A dozen barrels erupt on cue, all targeting John. He'll be fine. They won't even dent his armor, even if they make it past the wind.

You dump a good half of your stored luck into him. Proximity warheads detonate on their brothers, impact shells lose their arcs and plummet into the sand, into each other, a dozen yards from him.

He doesn't even notice.

The rest of his team is being less god-y and more tactical, keeping to low ground in John's shadow and picking off the ambushing infantry with precise shots.

You don't know if anything from that ridiculously giant cannon Equius is hauling or the pulse maser Jade eagerly fires should count as precise, though. And Nepeta still hasn't started carrying a gun. Damn, Leijon, you love slicing the colors out of a sucker with your bare claws as much as any troll, but there's times when that's not really the sane choice.

The rest of Blue Team definitely sees you, but they don't adjust their movements, don't shout to their leader, you see no traffic on the Blue Net.

_Good. They know John is **my** problem._

And the natives' problem. Different kind of problem. If they'd thought they could collapse John's column of grinding doom by distracting him, they were right. If they thought it would help them, they were very wrong.

Lances, waves, whips, nooses, folds, fists - John conjures the wind into a thousand destructive forms, and lashes out with all of them.

And he remains in the fugue.

You're close enough now. You see through his faceplate. Blank, unfocused eyes, arms in fluid, instinctive movements.

John kills without thinking.

A centauric rider/mount charges him, and with a flicker of his hand, a sandblast flays its skin, the roaring vortex punches down on it. Bright red blood fills the air.

The rider is fallen under its mount. It struggles feebly. Its breaths are shallow and weak.

Tranced, John only lowers his left arm for the killing blow.

You pull [ToggleWeapon ID#(RNG 1-64 FORCE)] the [#64] Marquis' Hand Cannon and in one unhalting motion, fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another short chapter, but it's late and I like the cliffhanger. Later chapters will restore the median length.


	12. Theodicy IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A MERE COVERING FOR THE MOST HORRID CRIMES; A JUSTIFIER OF THE MOST APPALLING BARBARITY; A SANCTIFIER OF THE MOST HATEFUL FRAUDS; AND A DARK SHELTER, UNDER WHICH THE DARKEST, FOULEST, GROSSEST, AND MOST INFERNAL ABOMINATIONS FESTER AND FLOURISH_  
>  \- The Sufferer, _I Don't Want To Live On This Planet Any More_
> 
> Since when are religious revolutionaries the only ones that get to crush societal norms? Vriska Serket only needs to know it's a rule to know she wants to break it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to deleting and replacing chapter 9/Theodicy I, 10 and 11 had weird dating. If you weren't subscribed to this you might have missed them. Go back and read!

John stares at the sparking, shattered remains of his robotic hand, stares at you, and his eyes finally focus.

[Narrowband]   
you know, eridan, of all people, was trying to convince me you were trustworthy, that you genuinely cared about me. that you wouldn't betray me.   
Of course he would, he's afr8d of the competition.  
8ut he's also right, John.   
you shot me, vriska.

You drop your pistol to your side, but don't return it to your Random Number Generator Sylladex.

Duh. 8ECAUSE I genuinely care a8out you!!!!!!!!!   
i'm pretty sure that doesn't make sense even for an alternian. you don't shoot your matesprit.   
You shoot your fucking 8oyfriend when he's going screeching-wing8east-shit insane.

John looks around, and he actually sees. His armor enforces some posture, but you can see him deflate a little, lose a bit of that imperious so-very- _un-John_ stance. Then he faces you again, and his eyes start to recloud.

they're just mobs, vriska.   
A mo8 is crazy and stupid, and I should know, I've m8de plenty of them. This is an army.   
no, MOBs. it's an old game term. mobile objects.   
........ What????????   
that's just it, vriska. it's all a game. a game worse than flarp, a game worse than bloodcastes. it's a game of worlds and species and i will scour it from the universe before it can make me a pawn again.

Your eyes flicker to the carapace rider, crawled out from its mount and dragging itself along the sands. Its legs are bulging in weird places, and raw pink, like they were torn apart from its mount. You don't think it could walk on its own even if it were healthy.

So you decided to just kill everyone that IS a pawn?   
i decided i wouldn't be manipulated. i'll do whatever it takes to END THIS GAME NOW.

You sylladex your gun, raise your hands, and pop your VIRAM helmet. You meet his eyes, and try to maintain a dramatic glare without having to squint to keep sand out of your eyes. Okay, fuck it, you're burning luck on this, the sand is just painful. "Okay, John. I'm here to stop you. I'm here to manipulate you. I'm here to play you. I'm here to stand in your way."

You step forward. "Kill me."

His eyes swirl, fading in and out of the killing fugue, and his right hand twitches in time to the uncontrolled movements of his left hand's wreck.

vriska what are you-   
K8LL M8. I'LL COME 8ACK. WHY DO YOU CARE? K8LL M8!!!!!!!!!

He raises his arm. Lowers it.

they're just tools, toys! think about it, about how ridiculous this is! a dark planet with black beasts, a glowing planet with white armies? it's all fake, they're all fake.   
So kill them. Like you killed an alien mutant attacking your 8est 8ro. Like you killed a tr8ined warrior who let your pink gru8lings die. Like you killed a 8lue8lood psychic fre8k that thre8tened an ent8re world of humans. K8LL M8 JOHN.  
Kill me if you can.

When John falls, it is slow - and intentional. His right arm drops. He falls forward to his knees, and he must be trying to, because the suit auto-balances by default. He starts to keel over - until you grab him.

"Get up, John Egbert. I don't care what that violet moron's been _preaching_ , I don't care what you've convinced yourself locked away in your own little mind. I'm not letting you go into the bloody place because _that's where I came from_." You drag him halfway to his feet. Sure, he's big and part metal and covered in more metal. You're a _troll_. "Don't get it wrong, Egbert. You didn't swoop in and save me, and I'm not doing that for you. But you helped motivate me to get out of that pit, and I thought I was enough to motivate you to stay out of it. Was I wrong?"

_You're on the razor's edge, Vriska. You're making this too complex, too blunt! You're so much more subtle now. Just reach in and help him. You know he doesn't want this. Remind him. It's only a tweak, he'll still be making his own decision-_

You're not sure _exactly_ what parts of you are dominant now, what parts are now the little voice you try to ignore. But you're sure _that_ thought was from the bloody place, and fuck listening to it.

John pops his own helmet back, and his eyes are gogdamn impenetrable. Not cloudy, just so blunt they're mysterious. He twists his arm out of your grip. You're a troll, but he's _John_. And he just remembered how much mangrit he's got to spend.

You're sure he refills it to full when he takes your hand with his, clasps firmly, and you both pull him to his feet. Well, that gives him drama points. The real mangrit comes when he does it without giggling or smirking. But there is a smile on his face - a hint of one, really, a twitch of the lips and mostly a glow in his eyes. It's the good smile, the one he saves for you.

_Who's the fucking master manipulator **now** , Terezi?_

That little voice probably isn't from a very good part of you either, but who gives a fuck. You just brought John _back_. You're going to be as smug as you like.

"I still want to end this now, Vris."

"Duh! Just end it like John Egbert would, instead of the bloodthirsty idiot-god Eridan wants to mold you into."

He does fully smile, but it's a wry, sad smile. "We have to watch that we don't become what we hate, don't we?"

"No fucking kidding!" You laugh. You actually can't stop laughing for a long while. "John, I'm trying to be a hero. You're fighting the urge to kill them all. Karkat's the fourth greatest killer of trolls in our history. You _always_ have to look out for that. That's the point of real kismesis. Having your hatred to look at and weigh yourself against, set yourself against even when you know you love part of it." You make a decision.

You headbutt John Egbert, then kiss him while he's reeling, tearing gouges in his lips and chin. You reach up and wipe away the hardening artificial blood, halfway between crimson and ebony. "I don't think I can be your kismesis or your matesprit, John."

He holds his breath, and almost looks uncertain, afraid.

_Fucking trickster._

That's a happy thought. You like it when he plays along.

"You obviously neeeeeeeed me to be both."

He lets out a dramatic sigh and just grins. "What about Eridan?"

You embrace him, which is pretty gogdamn silly since you're both in mechanized armor and besides your head none of your body gets within 20 cm of his, but it feels good anyway. "Oh, just hatefuck him on the side. Hell, we can double-team the violet bulge-biter if you like. He's not the worst pail, but you really can't let him get the best of you."

"Sure thing, oh romantic expert," John murmurs, wry grin returning.

"Fuckass," you growl back, pleased.

[Command Net]   
KV: HEY, DORKLORD OF THE INEXPLICABLE CHARISMA. YOU DONE FUCKING AROUND AND DRAGGING SERKET OUT OF POSITION YET?   
VS: Fuck offffffff, Vantas, I was fixing things!   
JE: is there a problem, karkat?   
RL [Interim Cobalt Leader Command Net Access]: Rather the inverse, John. We've reached our objective.   
KV: "REACHED". SURE, LET'S GO WITH THAT.   
RL: I can see the protouniversal object described by John and Vriska. Would you prefer an alternate phrasing?   
KV: YEAH, DOC, YOU COULD BE A LITTLE MORE COMPLETE IN YOUR SUMMARY.  
KV: LIKE, "WELL, JOHN, WE FOUND THIS FUCKING MIRACLE SPHERE YOU DESCRIBED."  
KV: "OH, AND THE DEMON GUARDING IT WOULD POLITELY LIKE TO NEGOTIATE WITH OUR LEADER, IF IT ISN'T TOO MUCH TROUBLE."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Post post post. Minichapters: 50% of the fat, 100% of the hate make-outs. Next up: A new perspective. Expect 5-8 weeks delay as I try to figure out characterization, then say fuck it and go back to John's PoV again!
> 
> So… how 'bout them Dirk flashes. What the Homestuck, man.


	13. The Second Demon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And you say the world goes rushing by  
>  But it seems so slow to me  
> And you see a blur around you fly  
> But it takes too long  
> It seems so slow to me_  
> \- unknown language fragment recovered from timestream, Megido 103.2(r) File.
> 
> Seeing the future doesn't mean you know what to do with it.

## 5: Aradia

If any part of this bothered you, it would be going to Vriska for advice. But, being honest about it (something you're very very used to. It's how your dynamic with Dave works after all), she's actually… _good_ now.

VS: Come oooooooon, Megido, stop ev8ding the question!   
AM: im not intentionally.  
AM: im just not sure what to say.   
VS: That's a hell of a novelty 8y itself ;;;;)   
AM: whatre you getting at?   
VS: You're ch8nging! You never ch8nged, Megido.   
AM: thats not true. sollux…   
VS: Nope! You two just crossed paths. You were 8oth going in opposite directions of cr8zy.   
AM: thanks.   
VS: I said "were"!!!!!!!! You're a lot more tolera8le with Strider, you know.   
AM: i guess.   
VS: No, you knoooooooow, 8ecause you're not stupid. He's latched onto you like a lost 8ark8east spawn, and he's changing you.  
VS: You never had goals 8efore, Aradia.   
AM: i had a lot of goals.   
VS: The dead had goals for you!!!!!!!!  
VS: So let's get 8ack to my original question.  
VS: What're you going to do afterwards?   
AM: im not sure there will be one.   
VS: So fucking humor me. Gog. It's like you've never had a h8 d8 to discuss your post-apocalyptic plans.   
AM: not in this context, no.

When it comes down to an outright forceful struggle, Breath beats Hope hands-down, which is why Eridan is wriggling in John's bonds of wind, while your (human/trustworthy/real) leader negotiates, weapons holstered, with the bemused-looking demon. Of course, you and Dave standing at his back is pretty useful. As is Dave constantly channeling alt-probabilities into you, you stirring them, and the resultant avoidance of Gl'bgoyb-deified vs everyone else strife that would happen in about 7% of probable realities.

This demon shares the porcelain coloration and carapace-like shell of the natives, but its form is otherwise identical to the demon on Losat, based on John's recordings - stylized wings, canine head, sword stabbed through the chest apparently without injury, tatters of cloth draped over it. For some reason you want to think "her".

It - she - has been remarkably polite to the alien treasure-hunters who came to rob her planet and killed hundreds of her people. John began muttering something about game logic, but Vriska got him in a headlock and mind-blasted him until his unflesh armor started to tear his skin open.

There's a story there, but you're going to leave it alone. Her boyfriend, her rules. And yes, they're definitely outside of quadrants now. You wonder idly how long it's going to take the others to realize what an artificial construct they are, and then of course a future-engram of yourself merges in with the polling data. Hm. You're a bit surprised to hear that Nepeta and Equius already accept their relationship with John as going beyond moirallegiance _and_ embrace it as something unique and beautiful. John really is a frighteningly good social catalyst, almost as much as Karkat. Who will not take long to begin his Second Sufferer's revelations with a reinterpretation of what the quadrants are for anyway. But enough time tampering - you have plenty to concern yourself with.

DS: what  
DS: with the whole power of a god war as good as over all of eternity open to us deal?   
AM: you forgot time jumping to intercept each others thoughts and answer them midway through, dave.  
AM: and "us" of course.   
DS: naw us is simple  
DS: <3   
AM: yeah, okay. <3\. that doesnt answer what were going to do though.   
DS: whatever we want?  
DS: why worry about it?   
AM: because  
AM: this is stupid.  
AM: because im afraid.   
DS: you know  
DS: you didnt talk to them   
AM: wh-  
AM: the horrorterrors?  
AM: no.  
AM: its not my  
AM: place.   
DS: bull fucking shit its not  
DS: dont even gotta talk ara  
DS: just listen  
DS: they know how gods work

AM: is john actually giving up anything? as far as i can tell were getting this godhead completely free.   
VS: Yuuuuuuuup. He's 8lunt 8ut that doesn't keep him from 8eing c8gey. ::::D   
AM: i dont think this demon actually wants to stop us.   
VS: ........  
VS: Neither do I.  
VS: That's suspicious.   
AM: or just serendipitous.   
VS: You're losing it, Megido! You're relaxing your guard 8ecause you're too worried a8out your feeeeeeeeligs!!!!!!!!   
AM: why should i be on guard anyway, vriska? were not the empires toys any more.   
VS: 8ecause when you relax is WHEN THEY GET YOU.   
AM: thats

You consider the past.

AM: actually, i think when you rest is when you get you.   
VS: ........ you're smarter than I thought, Megido. Yeah. You can't trust yourself any more than the fucking Condesce. We have 8ad 8lood in us.   
AM: angry. not bad. or are you going to say humans are all peaceful?   
VS: Hahahaha! Fuck, no! They have a nice civil government, 8ut they have animal 8lood-pumpers too. They think in h8.  
VS: That's why we all have to watch ourselves!!!!!!!!   
AM: did he plan this?   
VS: Did who plan what????????

Vriska tilts her head at you from her lounging position against the wall, eyes narrowed.

AM: did john plan to put a seed of his mind in you to bring him back if he fell?   
VS: ........  
VS: Wow. Fuck OFF, Megido.   
AM: <3<  
AM: just challenging you, serket.

She takes a while.

VS: No.   
AM: no?   
VS: He doesn't plan this stuff. It just happens, 8eing around him. 8ecause he's RIGHT.  
VS: Light is luck and I have to defend it. 8ut I need to SEE what I'm defending so........ I can see the shadows I cast.   
AM: youre losing me.   
VS: Am not! You don't want to admit it! 8ecause you're TIME, Megido, and you can see it too.  
VS: We're supposed to 8e 8etter than this.  
VS: We're ALL supposed to 8e 8etter than this.   
AM: in another world reality timeline yes.  
AM: in many others no.   
VS: So fucking what? We're middle of the pack in terms of universes, 8ig deal. I'm not going to sit here w8ing for things to change.  
VS: John wants to make us all 8etter.  
VS: I refuse to let anyone 8e worse than me, and I refuse to let anything STOP me from getting to perfection.  
VS: We'll drag 8oth species into a 8etter future, kicking and screaming if we have to!!!!!!!!  
VS: And you know that's where you come in.

That's insane. You can't just make people better. You know that more than anyone.

AM: better what?  
AM: did you go suffering when i wasnt looking?   
VS: No! Gog, it's not that cr8zy is it???????? 8etter to each other. 8etter than killers. 8etter than 8etrayers.   
AM: youre showing your kismesis your exposed throat, serket.   
VS: M8y8e I need to know if she's going to 8ite.   
AM: no.  
AM: ill help you, vriska.  
AM: but ill do it by fighting you.  
AM: by making you earn this grand redemption.   
VS: Good!!!!!!!!  
VS: I need you, Aradia. You and your dum8ass human 8oyfriend too.   
AM: you have us. youre going to need everyone.  
AM: and it doesnt look good among the god-ified.   
VS: Eridan's god trip? It can 8e fixed. I just need time!!!!!!!!   
AM: while the empire and coalition get more bloody.  
AM: and were not the only ones with time up our sleeves   
.VS: Yeah. Well.  
VS: We have John.

The demon spreads her wings and does a quick hop-glide back, over the godhead. It's just like John and Vriska told you, only… there's a color to the spirograph inside.

"Designated reward…" John murmurs, and Vriska is too distracted to hit him.

Karkat approaches one side of the crimson-lilac pattern. Rose approaches the other. It's like being in a play. Everyone else knows to stand still.

It leaps out to their outstretched hands, curves around them, and -

Nothing.

No transformation. No sensation of power. The pattern just vanishes.

"Oh," John says slowly, stupefaction becoming slow understanding. "I get it."

A moment of silence. Several more.

"Well, and?" Karkat snarls.

John, however, turns and raises his arms defensively at Vriska. "Vris, I'm really really not reverting or anything! You gave me a good wallop and I'm back to normal, honest."

Vriska smiles. Her fangs only come out that far when she's going to bite, and most of your collective group unconsciously tenses.

Except John. He returns an entirely relaxed, self-assured grin. "I know! Look, I promise I'll entertain every other possible reason besides my earlier game thing, okay, but I'm still pretty damn sure this is what we have to do."

Your kismesis is silent. She does put her fists on the hips of her armor.

"HEY. FUCKNUTS." Karkat doesn't need to put his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice, but he does anyway. You think you can hear a faint ringing. "John. What the FUCK are you talking about, what in the rotting bone bulge of this diseased universe do we need."

"Well… I think… youneedtodie." John says it like speed will just let you skip past this part. It won't. (Okay, _you_ could skip past this part. But you won't.)

Karkat's jaw drops. Rose taps hers thoughtfully.

"The Gl'bgoyb-empowered and Dave and Aradia?"

"You're the expert, Doc, but I'm assuming I'm right about the general result of a human or troll trying to make the transition to the Furthest Ring without any kind of shielding whatsoever?"

"It… would be in some aspects indistinguishable from death, yes. A death said ascendants would then recover from given the terms of the empowerment…" she muses.

DS: fuck  
DS: fuck fuck fuck  
DS: FUCK   
AM: what?   
DS: I coulda saved you in fucking  
DS: MOMENTS  
DS: if id just been willing to let go and give you time   
AM: and would we have known about the empires genetic engineered castes?  
AM: would you have learned in that brief time how to control any part of what we do without being torn apart by forces vastly greater than us?  
AM: would it have given you a chance to show me your world and your people, the whole truth of it?   
DS: uh  
DS: no probably not  
DS: jesus dirk and robo really did give you the dave shutdown codes didnt they   
AM: dave.  
AM: they didnt need to. 0u0

"The data fits. Apologize to mother if I'm wrong. Sodium thiopental 1.4 kg, pancuronium bromide 80 mg." It's only when Jade gasps that you realize Rose was talking to her suit, and she collapses.

"John!!! Do something!!!"

He raises his hand - and Vriska grabs his arm. "No other way to test it, Harley. She volunteered."

"No! Fuck that! This is - this is fucking crazy! You've snapped, John, and look what you did!"

Vriska's face is developing one of her new twitches. You think it means _holy fucking gog I wish I didn't have a conscience keeping me from mindfucking you_.

"Jade. Fucking chill, alright. I'm Rose's legal health care agent." Dave moves ahead of the eye, puts a restraining hand on his old flame's shoulder. "Seriously, you think she'd trust Roxy with something like that? Fuck no, not passive-aggressive enough. And she pretty fucking clearly told me - and by told I mean made my son-of-a-bitch bro hack it into my goddamn neural implant - that she doesn't want anyone interfering with any of her demented, insane abomination-upon-reality scientific experiments. Whatever they do to her."

"You- Dave, she's your _sister_ , you can't just fucking-"

"Rest assured that particular activity is off the table between us permanently. Although I must admit this has a certain post-coital rush to it."

You're not sure how you missed the light enveloping her, but when everyone turns to look at Rose only glimmers of gold and orange are fading away around her.

"Hypothesis supported, John," she offers him with a slight nod. He gives a giant smile even you will admit is dorky, and hugs Vriska.

"FUCK ME." Karkat appears to be trying to commit suicide by squeezing the sides of his head until his think-pan comes out his nasal inhalation tubules. "Now I fucking have to, don't I."

"Bet Pyrope would do it for you!" Vriska catcalls.

"No, fuck that, there's only one dumbass that deserves to have to do this. Strider! Get the fuck over here. You've had enough practice almost cutting my head off, do it right this time. Do it, man."

Dave makes it happen.

His blade vanishes instantly back into his armor, and he keeps his hands on either side of Karkat's severed head, holding his body upright.

This time you're all watching when the column of red-streaked black glow hammers into the Mobassador's body, and he reaches up to Dave's hands. "Let go, you're gonna put it on backwards. No, no, you have to turn it. NOT FLIPWISE."

John facepalms. "This is what my life has come to. Godlike immortality used for bad comic routines."

Jade slugs him in the shoulder. "Hey, fuckass! The angel says that's not all the 'essence'."

"There's more here?" He enters Professional Mode with frightening speed.

"No… they're in another dimension, I think? Between realities, I think!"

"The demon's dimension." John answers easily.

"Sure fucking looks like it! So when are we breaking reality to go there?"

"How about RIGHT FUCKING NOW?" Karkat has his head reattached, but it hasn't done much for his anger issues. He jabs the air with his sickle to point at everyone else. "I have a headache like YOU WOULD NOT FUCKING BELIEVE, and I'm going to get every other one of you fuckwads feeling just as bad, TODAY."

"The Geist of Blood has spoken," John says, a vague hint of a smile on his face. It's that authoritative voice he used when titling Gamzee and Tavros back on Alternia. You're not exactly sure why the Prince of Breath knows more than the Mage of Time, but part of you fears asking for the answer might feed back into the thinking Vriska just forced him out of, and the rest of you thinks, _it's John, duh_. Maybe some of you are still listening to Eridan and his godhood pitch, but you've chosen sides, permanently. John is, quite simply, a friend, and you trust him with your life. That's really all there is to say on the matter.

"And if the Guide of Light is in agreement," John adds, nodding to Rose, "I think our host may be able to help us."

He gives the white-carapaced demon a look of polite inquiry, and you know exactly what the answer is going to be, without looking into the future in the slightest.

Because - had you mentioned this? - _he's John Egbert_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, that's right, I put TWO SBaHJ references into a godhood chapter. Whatcha wanna do, fight about it?


	14. The Terminus and the Threshold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you just have to seize what you need. That doesn't make you the villains, though.
> 
> If you are, it's for other reasons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who's back! More highlighting text time!

**Achronal**  
You've grown to hate stepping out. And you hate that you hate it.

you look pissed  
like id pity the fucker thats made you mad  
but itd get weird with our quadrants  
and im really more of a schadenfreude junkie anyway  
its stupid!  
but this was OURS!

Dave <depercepts>.

The Handmaid unleashes a <retemporance>. You <recept> it where you can.

Dave <beforms>, sword already in her gut.

Your Ancestor-Descendant <anticauses>.

yeah  
yeah i feel you  
the fuck happened to nulltime being a sweetass makeout and party spot, noble circle bros?  
i think we have to be in their dimension for them to hear us dave.  
fuck nah thats just the excuse they use to get visitors  
fucking shut-in elder god hermits  
old pappy azathoth aint come out of his shack at the end of the avenue in years kids  
a billion eyes can only see so much of everything  
but they sure as fuck admitted they find us interesting  
i know theyre listening  
oh. okay.  
i  
uh  
was expecting a bit more response  
given what weve done while outside of time  
dave, did you forget what i did before i died? i'm not afraid of an invisible audience.  
hot  
jackass.

You feel it at the same <perceptime> and strike faster than light could move in this realm, but it's too late.

The jackass has already started talking.

The continued futility of your assaults, when you know quite well that I knew the outcome of this encounter before instigating it, and therefore that I cannot be harmed or even deterred from my goals at this point in time, would annoy me were I capable of being annoyed.  
Yes, I'm quite aware of what I have done in other universes, dear readers, that too falls under the umbrella of omnipotence. Those iterations are not this iteration, referred to as "me" for simplicity's sake and for a lack of appropriate terminology in your dismally ontologically unsatisfactory language.  
Don't grow so overconfident. I address you as well as this iteration of Dave Strider, readers.  
And writer.  
I am an idea. A thought form made into a personality through various means and ends depending upon iteration and context. The simple facts of the matter are that, firstly, I am given particular form via the expression of art or words. Hence my enduring image attributable to my original iteration's so-called artist, my excessive verbosity in this iteration owing to this derivative writer's disdainful impression of me, and so forth. Secondly, that the human mind is an irrational, illogical, ridiculous chimera whose disparate parts cannot ever truly communicate.  
Thirdly, that such a mind expresses precisely as much of me as it desires - and as much as I can slip through the rather major cracks in it. (You will note this point is important enough to merit syntactical separation)

motherfucker  
stand still one fucking second while youre babbling  
i will show you disparate

Your rude speech does little but express the fear your construct of a personality is striving to keep in check, Mr. Strider.  
Because you know. It is a difficult truth to accept, that one is fictional, but I do not even have to expend any effort promoting it to you.  
Your iteration of John Egbert is doing that for me.  
But here you seize upon misguided hope, for after all, does Mr. Egbert not promote a narrative ideology that promises the villains will be cast down, the heroes will triumph, and everyone will retire to peace?  
His expressing such a belief does not make it true.  
I state facts.  
John will die, permanently. The death one does not come back from.  
You will both die, permanently.  
You will die before completing your goals.  
You will die before this story is finished.  
You will not die before my lord comes.  
He is already here.

futureburst retroactive isn't the same as now. just like omniscient isn't omnicomprehending. you're precise with words to hide your gaps, scratch.

Sigh. This is why the Megido line needs significant training in order to be useful.

dude did you just SAY sigh?  
tool

I believe it's time this encounter come to an end. It would be counterproductive to continue.  
And boring, besides. One can't go overboard on the long stretches of prolix prose requiring highlighting or one starts to lose an audience.  
Really, prolix? You should concentrate on your continuity rather than your thesaurus use, writer.  
The devil's in the details.

You could not have a more obnoxious enemy, you swear. The Condesce is the tiniest gnat compared to this constantly buzzing cockroach. Between the slimy, persistent references to breaking your bloodline and the way he WON'T SHUT UP while managing to be <nowhen> every SINGLE time you attack, you just… uggghh.

If he's right, if John's right, the Writer of All Things must _love_ the smug, self-indulgent blather that thing never stops, or he must _hate_ Scratch with enough passion to want you to hate him too.

stories break  
huh?  
what?

He <bitemporcates> and reviews.

fuck  
i don't know why i said that  
or have any memory of saying it  
<nullconceptive> attack?  
nah  
no spin

You both wait a <nonsecond>.

want to…  
yeah

He flicks his visor to complete opacity.

hey rocky watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat  
do we have to do this every time?  
ara dont make me lose out to john on the annual human irony points tally  
do you have any idea what that would do to me  
have to resign my badge and my gun  
hire an actor to be the chief to demand them  
buy the badge and the gun because i dont have either  
and im on a government salary  
i cant afford that  
dave, if i wanted THIS much weirdness and confusion in my love life i could have gone black with terezi  
i do not compare to judge dredd lickface  
this is bullshit discrimination against grimdark-americans  
you cant handle our  
uh  
greyness  
too challenging to your own geneto-cultural heritage

You don't have all night for him to do this. Well, technically, you have all of existing time for him to do this, but while you find it amusing (and he knows you do), you both agreed to at least _try_ to be in similar moods to your friends when you're occupying any given timespan.

So no getting giggly and happy before you jump back in to the fight against the demon in his home reality.

Well, that's probably why Dave suggested you jump back for a you've-stopped-counting-th version of your attack on the Condesce first.

That always helps get you in a nice and violent mood. But…

no, wait.  
he's going to be there.  
fuck  
i keep forgetting that  
im in no mood to hear any more of his fuckassery  
well  
pit stop anywhen else?  
nah  
duty calls huh?  
afraid so. they are our friends.  
mostly  
shut up  
no  
i dont care that i could edit time to be your pupahood friend instead of him  
i just care that he thinks he knows you  
its like he wants to shackle you in his memories  
and fuck  
that  
noise  
dave. did i ask you to fight my battles for me?  
no  
alright  
its not that i dont trust you ara  
i mean holy shit  
i trust you more than i ever THOUGHT i would trust anyone  
i trust you enough for our contingency plan  
i just found some part of me that i never knew i had thats fanatical about autonomous personality rights  
rose will be fucking thrilled  
good! but i won't be the SUBJECT of anyone's crusades, dave.  
i'm actually going to have been very happy with the results of my having told sollux off anyway.  
your language is really useful for this, scratch is an idiot.  
gog bless crazy english grammar  
okay dropping party time in three  
two  
one

Dave doesn't pick the moment he vanished from, of course. You can go to where time is space, or move so fast time is a blur, but it's often easiest to just jump back when where you were is the best place to be.

This time, that's with his sword a few cm from the demon while he lunges back from Equius's fist.

This doesn't guarantee success, of course; the demon thrashes wings as soon as Dave re-exists, taking a long gash down the wing to avoid impalement.

Of course, that's when it's your turn. Warping time on the demon wouldn't do a damn thing, he's already a quasi-temporal entity. And your telekinesis is pretty iffy in a subdimension lacking any real objects of mass.

Fortunately, the cost of power is straining, not draining. Which means eight years, sixteen months, eleven days of labor in a mine pit has given you one hell of a left hook.

In the quarter-second he's dazed by your fist to his temple, you palm-smack his chin up and get the demon in a choke-hold.

not to sound ungrateful, by any means, you two are true friends, but you couldn't have done that maybe an hour ago?  
had to be worn down first boss  
otherwise he just flips out and stabs one of us  
whos got the  
oh gogdammit you let my murderclown boytoy have the sword  
Aw MaN dAvEbRo YoU kNoW i CaN uSe A sWoRd MoThErFuCkInG fInE.  
yeah man i do thats why i kinda dont want you tempted  
also purely out of curiosity  
why are you hulk mode  
swords dont need hulk mode  
Oh ShIt WaS i StIlL sUpEr HuGe? My BaD, bRo.  
its cool ya big bastard  
gogdamn thats the one and only thing i dislike about trolls  
yall make me look gogdamn short  
GROW A SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE EQUAL IN SIZE TO YOUR SENSE OF SELF-WORTH, DAVE. WE'RE KIND OF BUSY HERE.  
i have him under control, karkat.

You do. The demon's good at struggling. He's still a quarter the density of a troll, and your lock is solid.

SO WHO'S DO1NG TH1S? I C4N 34T H1S M1ND W4Y F4ST3R TH4N VR1SK4.  
Have fun, Pyrope!!!!!!!!  
W41T WH4T.  
she's just goadin you, ter. don't let her get to you, you're a god.  
yeah, let's just invest everybody's self-worth in their "godhood" nothing can go wrong with this plan.  
you challengin me on hope, eg?  
i said i could hold him, i didn't say i had the milennia it would take for you two to stop black-flirting and come to a decision.

The damn squishly flesh-kids really just need to shut the fuck up and tell you what the fuck they're here for, you're getting real sick of watching their meat flaps… flap.

cooooooool. you're just written right into the narrative. we want your element. you know the one. you tried to take one just like it.

That piece of shit? The future urn-fillings are welcome to the damn thing, it never did you anything but look shiny. Fuck. You mean, sit there being useless. You sure as fuck never went through a shiny-things-caching period

whatever, man. er, demon. i'm not here to judge. just give us the element.

You take the kids to the thing, though this dame that's built like a Buick doesn't make it easy. They can have it as long as they stay the fuck out of the rest of your hoard.

NOTH1NG, VR1SK4? R34LLY?  
I guess we're not all as m8terial as you, Terezi!  
vris. please?  
Ok8y, ok8y. Fussyfangs, 8oyfriend's moirails and si8ling?  
lets dooooooooooooo  
oooooooooo  
this  
lets do this  
ooooooooooo  
ooooooo this!!  
=--= If I may be permitted to indulge?  
:33 < hell yeah!  
> after this much work i think it's pretty fucking mandatory, eq.  
=--= Thank you. Ahem.  
=--= Hell. It's about time.

## Ascension

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's... it's done! I'm FREEEEEE!  
> ... now I have to think of the title and scope of the next fic. Fuck.
> 
> And, because I never actually did give a comprehensive list in the narrative:  
> > prince of breath.  
> Knight of Light.  
> heir of time  
> mage of time.  
> S---Eer of Lif---E!  
> heir of hope  
> phage of doom.  
> FORC3 OF M1ND.  
> Knight… Of Breath.  
> SkIn Of RaGe.  
> Guide of Light.  
> GEIST OF BLOOD.  
> thief of space!!  
> Sage Of Space  
> =--= Rogue of Void  
> :33 < prince of heart!!!
> 
> An astute observer of canon (anyone who reads homestuck more than they write slash fics… which I guess no longer includes me…) will note that several of these titles violate the rules of gender that Calliope gave. Well, turns out the 25th century, both human society and the universe itself, gives no fucks about gender _or_ sex roles, and has decided to give out titles appropriate to their bearers, whatever their gender!
> 
> An astute observer of phoenetics may notice I have no less than three titles ending in -age. Said astute observer can shut up, okay, finding good one-syllable titles is hard!


End file.
